


The 24th pair

by Adrenalineshots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Disability, Dreams, Gen, Mind Control, Season/Series 06, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 57,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reality is but a mere point of view, fueled by the emotions it stirs. For Dean, reality is a life where he has lost everything: his brother, his friends, Lisa... his ability to walk. The only thing Dean has left is Ben, a surrogate son that is about to be taken from his hands as well. For Sam and Bobby, reality is a constant search for someone that they have lost and keeping each other hopeful that their quest will not be in vain. And for one man in particular, reality is all that stands between him and his dreams of becoming more than human.</p><p>This is a story about the same event, experienced from three different points of view. Trust no one; take nothing for a fact. Assume only that illusion and reality are twin sides of the same mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The 24th pair

 

 

 _He was no stranger to an autopsy room. In fact, Dean had lost count of the number of times he had stepped into one of those sterile places that try so hard to hold on to the illusion of medicine and health but had always reminded Dean more of a slaughter house rather than a hospital._

 _Never once did he stop to wonder what it would feel like to lie on top of one of those metallic tables, staring up at a bright light, waiting for a guy in blood stained apron to start cutting into you._

 _Dean knew exactly how it felt now. It was cold. The soulless metal bit into his flesh like a vampire, leeching life away._

 _He could feel goosebumps rising like stalactites from his skin, could smell the disinfectant in the air, could hear his own heart beating, wildly inside his ears._

 _What Dean couldn't do, was move. Nothing obeyed him, not even a single muscle. He couldn't even blink._

 _From the corner of his eye, Dean could see a set of surgical instruments on top of a side table, shiny and lined up, waiting to be put to use._

 _He couldn't flinch away, couldn't speak, couldn't do a damn thing to prove that his body had no right to be in an autopsy table. The living didn't belong in there. He wasn't dead._

 _Sweat broke out on his skin, a strange feeling of being hot and cold at the exact same time. Corpses didn't sweat._

 _Dean was sure that the man with the bloody apron would notice that before he started to cut him open. He hoped the man would notice._

 _Dean was still hoping when the scalpel started to cut into his spine, splitting him in half. The sound of the alarm's siren call going off at a distance was no match for the hammering of Dean's panic._

Dean opened one eye and peered at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It took several blinks for the red blur to finally dissolve into more discernible numbers. Six thirty.

He rolled to the right, staring at the white ceiling; bed sheets tangled around his sweat covered body as his hand searched the empty, cold space, beside him. It had been empty for years now, but he couldn't help but check one more time.

It had been four years since the accident and still the thoughts and memories of that night haunted Dean. Every morning when he woke, he reached blindly, afraid to look but hopeful that he'd feel her warm flesh and dispel the events of the past as nothing but a horrific nightmare. A brush of his fingers over the cold sheet and his nightmare was once again his reality.

His eyes landed on the wheel chair by the other side of the bed. Encased in black leather and gleaming stainless steel wheels, his personal boogieman stared back at him, daring him, yet again, to end his misery today.

Dean did the same thing he always did when the darkness threatened to swallow him whole: he pulled his useless legs out of bed, made sure that the chair's brakes were solidly locked and heaved himself onto it. An aluminum throne for the lame king.

It was time to start another day. Get himself ready for work and make sure that Ben was ready for school.

Once the hectic day started, Dean would be okay. When he was too busy to even stop and take a breath, he could almost forget about the day he had killed Lisa.

 **≪◇≫**

"We're here," Sam said as he slipped the car in park and cut the engine.

"You sure this is the right place?" Bobby asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

Sam exhaled an exasperated sigh and bent forward to get a better look at the house. It had been a long, mostly sleepless week and he rolled his shoulders, in an attempt to force his muscles to relax before he answered.

It wasn't Bobby's questioning that prompted such response. In fact, Sam couldn't have agreed more with the uncertainty coloring Bobby's question. He just wasn't sure how to answer the older man.

It was a big house, perfectly kept. The two circular towers, peeking from each end of the construction and crowned by ceramic blue tiles that glinted in the sun, gave it a fake old look, like a castle made of brick instead of stone. The perimeter of the residence was surrounded by well maintained, tall hedges; their placement was, no doubt, strategic as they allowed for little to no view of the lower portion of the house. The security cameras, however, perched on top of the walls and alongside the house, like metallic gargoyles, were easy to spot.

Sam looked at the piece of paper where he had scribbled the address their contact had given them, making sure that he hadn't made a wrong turn. It was the right house. But whether this was the right place... that fact remained to be seen.

"Only one way to find out," Sam whispered, not sure if he was answering Bobby or just trying to convince himself to get out of the car.

It was the only lead they had left, their last hope before having to face the hard truth: Dean was gone.

There were more cars parked in front of the house, maybe a dozen or more. Clearly, he and Bobby had not been the only ones answering the call of money. This was exactly what they'd feared would happen. The more hunters there were around, especially in a well-lit house, the greater the chances of one of them recognizing them.

"Maybe you should wait here," Bobby offered, apparently his thoughts traveling a similar path to Sam's.

"They'll recognize you too," Sam offered almost petulantly. This was his brother they were looking for. He would not take kindly to being left out of that search.

Bobby gave him a look and Sam sagged in his seat. It was one thing to be identified as Sam Winchester, reportedly dead and rumored to having opened the gates of Hell that one time; it was another completely different to be Bobby Singer, researcher extraordinaire and all around grumpy guy that helped a lot of hunters. Given the reason why they were all there, Bobby was _expected_ to show up. Sam, not so much.

"You're right," Sam conceded. "I'll just... wait here."

Bobby got out of the car and straightened his cap before bending down to meet Sam's eyes across the car. "We'll get him back, son," he added with the familiar endearment. "I promise you that."

Sam nodded, more to show his gratitude for Bobby's support than because he believed the man's words.

It had only been a week, but with Castiel ready to open the gates of Purgatory and Crowley after their blood, one week was too long. Dean was missing, taken by an unknown entity, for reasons that they couldn't even begin to guess.

And here they were. Grasping at straws.

 **≪◇≫**

"We still on for tonight's meeting?" Ben asked around a mouth full of toast. "The one about the school?" he added, seeing Dean's blank stare.

"About the school... right," Dean nodded absent-mindedly. "What time was that again?"

"Dude... you totally forgot about it," Ben said with an eye roll. "I only mentioned the thing about twenty times this week."

Dean remembered. He'd just been overly hopeful that Ben had forgotten. "I'm still not so sure this is a good idea, Ben," he said as he picked up their breakfast empty dishes, put them on his lap and rolled to the kitchen sink. "I mean, this ain't X-Men and I'm certainly no Professor Xavier... besides, I have a bunch of papers to grade tonight..."

Even with his back turned, Dean could feel the heat of Ben's gaze on him. "You promised."

Dean sighed. Ever since Lisa's death, Ben had been pushing for this idea of opening up a place where people could go and learn about the supernatural things of the world. A place to learn how to recognize evil things, how to avoid them, how to kill them. It was his not-so-subtle way of working around Dean's refusal to teach him about hunting himself.

The last thing Dean wanted was for Ben to follow in his footsteps, but he had to give the kid extra points for ingenuity. And persistence.

Dean had gladly supplied the young man with a list of hunters, along with his blessing in trying to convince any of them to join in and share their knowledge. The idea of spreading the hunting world's knowledge to those who sought it was a good one, an idea that Dean himself had even entertained a few times in the past. Something for others to do. Not Dean.

The list of hunters he'd given Ben had been, however, depressingly short. Between those already dead and those who wanted nothing to do with Dean Winchester, Ben had ended up with only three hunters.

The most important name, however, Ben was still working on getting.

"You promised that you would at least give it a try," Ben went on. "We already have ten people ready to sign in and this guy who is willing to finance us—"

"What guy?" Dean asked, suspicious of such generosity.

Ben rolled his eyes, something that told Dean that, like the meeting conversation, this too was something that Ben had told him more than once. "The new teacher? Jacob Michaels?"

Dean tensed. Right, Jacob Michaels... the _Third_.

Ben had told him about the substitute history teacher at his school. Apparently, the guy was loaded with money to his eyeballs, working as a teacher just because he liked it, or so Ben had relayed.

Dean had never met the guy, but he had checked up on him the second he'd invited Ben to some sort of history club that he was forming at the school. The guy checked out, though, as far as Dean could dig up; old money, had lost his wife to 'unusual' circumstances some five years before.

When the matter of supernatural creatures had come up for discussion and the new teacher had implied that monsters might not be as mythical and unreal as history books had lead people to believe, Ben had been the one to figure out that the new teacher probably knew a thing or two about the supernatural. And Dean had finally understood what sort of 'unusual circumstances had killed Jacob's wife.

After that, it came as no surprise to Dean that the new teacher would be interested in funding a 'hunters' school'. He knew all too well the feeling of easing one's pain by making sure others didn't go through the same. After all, that and revenge were the two main reasons for most hunters to start in the life.

Still, something about the guy rubbed Dean the wrong way.

"You already have Joshua, Johnson and Oliver," Dean pointed out, reserving his judgment of the man for when he finally got to meet him. "They'll do a fine job."

"We still need you—"

"No," Dean said sadly. "You need someone like Bobby... someone like Sam. They were teacher material. Not me."

"Well, they're dead," Ben pointed out, his eyes taking on a defiant glint that was always there when he mentioned Dean's dead brother. It looked foreign on Ben's face "Besides, you _are_ a teacher."

Dean sighed, sensing another losing battle. "I teach math to twelve year olds... hunting is a hell of a lot different."

"A promise is a promise, dad," Ben added with a pleading look.

For someone who had had so little contact with Sam, the kid had mastered the puppy-dog look even better than Dean's dead brother.

"Come on, now... we'll be late for school!" Ben said, taking off at a run to the truck parked outside.

 **≪◇≫**

"Is he awake?"

The security guard sporting a blooming black eye turned and faced him squarely, a nervous twitch in his neck betraying the coolness of his stance. He was paid to behave like a protective wall, tall, strong and emotionless. He knew perfectly well that harboring thoughts of retribution towards the one who had given him that black eye would only get him fired. Still, it was clear from the current condition of his face that yes, the prisoner was awake.

"We have him secured to a chair, sir," the tall man said, red stained teeth peeking out between each word.

The prisoner had clearly put up a fight, as Marcus had expected him to.

"Good. Open the door."

The room was being kept in complete darkness. It was both a necessary measure to keep the prisoner confused about his surroundings and to make it easier for the infrared cameras and sensors scattered about to do their readings.

Light flooded the room as Marcus entered.

The man tied to the chair in the middle of an otherwise empty room, blinked furiously in attempt to adjust his sight. Canting his head to the side, he made abortive attempts to wipe at his eyes with his shoulders as the tears from the sudden and harsh change in brightness, rolled down his face.

"Who the fuck are you?" he growled.

Marcus stopped at a distance, clutching the weapon in his hand. Even bound, he would not risk everything by underestimating his prisoner.

"My name is Marcus Finnegan, the third."

The man on the chair finally squinted in his direction with a somewhat unfocused gaze. His lip was split and there was a red bruise forming on his chin. Rather than mar his face, the bruises seemed to enhance the man's fierceness, like they belong there and were just as much of a permanent feature as the man's green eyes.

"Good for you," the prisoner said dryly, devoid of all mirth. "Now do you mind letting me know why I was attacked by your King Kong buddy outside and why THE FUCK AM I TIED TO A CHAIR?" he asked, voice rising in tone as his anger grew. The chair, heavy as it was, scrapped across the floor as the man bucked in his seat, struggling against his bindings.

Marcus took a step back, eye on the ropes. He was sure that, if it weren't for those, the prisoner's hands would now be around his neck right now. "You are here because you have answers to questions that few other hunters even know how to ask," he said, trying to keep his voice steady, reminding himself that he was the one in charge. He was the one to be feared.

The man on the chair quieted at the mention of other hunters, just like Marcus knew he would.

This was like any other hostile takeover that he'd done in the past. And the man strapped to that chair was the smaller company that Marcus was going to tear apart for his own profit. They always fought, bared their teeth, but in the end, Marcus had always gotten what he wanted.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," his captive said, his eyes darting around not for the first time, looking for a weak spot that would allow him his freedom. "Never liked hunting all that much, to be honest," he went on, matter of factly. "Don't like my steak looking at me with condemning eyes when I eat it, if you know what I mean."

"Oddly enough, almost every hunter that I've met knows of you," Marcus went on, ignoring the man's words. "Or at least of your family. And they have a lot to say about you and your supposedly dead brother."

The man on the chair tensed, his rigid muscles betraying the fact that Marcus' words were getting closer.

"You and I, Dean," Marcus went on, taking special pleasure in confirming that he had in fact the right man in his possession, "we can learn a lot from each other. And I, for one, am looking forward to it."

"You got the wrong guy, pal," Dean offered casually, an almost bored look on his face. "Never liked teachers all that much and the one time I tried to be one, one kid ended up in the infirmary with a broken nose," he added with a smirk.

It was almost too easy to believe that Dean was telling the truth, that all of what Marcus had learned about him was nothing but lies and rumors. And yet, the words sounded almost like a threat coming from Dean's lips.

"Who is the man in the trench coat?" Marcus asked, unable to stop himself. There were so many questions to be answered and the one person with answers was right there, at his mercy. But right now, Marcus would settle for just one. " _What_ is he?"

Dean looked up, meeting Marcus' eyes, gazing deeper than skin, into Marcus' soul. They had assured him that Dean was just a man, human like him, and yet, under his gaze, Marcus had his doubts. He found himself taking a step back, despite himself.

"People tend to wear clothes, trench coats included," Dean finally said, his lips curling into a smile. "You'll have to be a bit more specific than that."

Marcus extended his hand, revealing the weapon between his fingers. It didn't look like much, a simple square of black plastic with blue tips. Usually, Marcus used them to train his dogs. Today he would be training a different kind of animal.

"Tall guy, black hair, emotionless expression," Marcus elaborated. "The angel that seems to follow you everywhere," he ventured, hoping that Dean would confirm his guess.

Dean's eyes widened for half a second before he regained his uninterested, casual stance. "You're smoking the wrong meds, buddy. There's no such thing as angels."

Dean was lying through his teeth, Marcus knew that. He had to be.

Marcus drew the taser closer to Dean's face, making sure that he got a good look at what was coming. Surely the hunter knew how much one of those hurt close range like that. Answering a few simple questions could not be worth that kind of agony.

To Marcus' bafflement, Dean started to laugh.

"Really? A taser? What, no water hosing or whipping before?" Dean said between chuckles. "That's lame, dude... gotta do better than that."

When Marcus flicked the taser on and pressed the blue tip of the taser against Dean's neck, he realized that the man's unconcerned remarks about his weapon of choice hadn't been a bogus façade or even inflated hubris.

The only reaction the taser got from Dean was the physical one, the one that he could not help. His muscles tensed and spasmed. The smile turned into a rigid rictus that would not slip from Dean's face even as his teeth tinged red, probably from biting his own tongue.

If Marcus didn't know better, he would say that the man was enjoying it.

"Angels don't exist, you idiot," Dean let out as soon as Marcus removed the taser and allowed him the chance to catch his breath enough to speak. "Whatever it is you're searching for, you better search for it someplace else, cupcake."

Marcus dug his nails deep into his palms. He was feeling like a kid, playing with grown up toys. A man tied to a chair and being torture by him was making him feel incompetent and lacking... inept.

Marcus hated that more than anything.

 **≪◇≫**

After losing the use of his legs and in need of transportation, Dean hadn't dared to 'mutilate' the Impala in order to make his poor car fit to be driven by a disabled person. Instead, he had gotten a new one, a bland Ford pickup, already built with paraplegics in mind, with a swiveling driver's seat and all.

The Impala was stored away, hidden from sight until the day Ben would decide to take the car for his own. Since it couldn't go to Sam, he'd be proud to have the boy take her.

That day, however, seemed not to be in the near future as Ben was more of a motorcycles kind of kid. Completely infatuated with the idea, he'd already begun saving up to buy one for himself, as soon as he turned eighteen. Until then, and since Dean taught at the same school Ben attended, they made the drive together.

Dean would've sold the Impala already if not for the fact that the mere thought of getting rid of the car made his chest grow tight. Just passing a similar model on the street made his heart beat faster.

That car had been more than a means of transportation for the Winchesters; it had been the glue that bonded two generations of hunters, the blood that had kept them going even when one of them was missing or dead. It was the symbol of a life that Dean would never get back.

Dean bit his bottom lip. There was a reason why he was out of the hunting life and the last thing that Dean wanted was to get involved in it again. Even so, seeing how excited Ben was about this, there was no way he could back out now.

As his arm reached out to grab the car keys, an electric jolt coursed through Dean's spine. The pain was so sharp and consuming that he almost fell off his chair as he tried to curl on himself. "Sssh... it!"

The world warped, turned white and, for a few seconds, Dean was in some other place, amid a swarm of tubes and whirling machines, helpless to move or even breathe on his own, surrounded by strange faces looking down on him.

Dean gripped the rails of the chair, nails digging in, grasping for something, anything to hold on to, anything that would ground him. The brightness dulled and he could finally blink, concentrating on taking one deep breath after another until he could control his body once more. Until he could see straight again. Slowly, the hall of his house took shape and colors returned.

"Son of a bitch…" Dean panted and pushed back until he was upright in his chair once more.

No matter how many times the same thing happened to him, Dean could never quite shake off this particular side effect of the accident. It always set his teeth on edge and left him feeling off somehow, like the world wasn't quite right.

Looking down, Dean saw the car keys. He had probably dropped then when the jolt had hit him. They seemed impossibly far away, on the floor.

Dean leaned over to one side, stretching his arm to reach the ground. His fingers brushed against the keychain, pushing it away instead of nearer and he cursed in frustration.

"Here, lemme get those for you," Ben's voice sounded from above. Before Dean could move further, the keys were grabbed off the ground, disappearing before his watery vision.

Dean looked up, eyeing Ben. "Thanks," he murmured and grabbed the keys from his kid. Some days, he wondered who exactly was taking care of whom in their crazy, fucked up family.

Grabbing the sidebars of his wheel chair, Dean pulled the door closed and went to the car where Ben was waiting. Dean guessed that the least he could do was give this school idea a try.

The screech of burning tires stole Dean from his thoughts just in time for him to see the black car swerving in his direction.

There was no time to escape, no time to react. He could only grab hold and hang on, fingers digging in a, claw like grasp on his wheelchair, as if the leather and metal could protect him from the coming impact. This was it.

Dean Winchester, hunter of demons and Heaven's pain in the ass, was going to die in his front lawn, sitting on his chair, too scared shitless to move.

And yet, everything was happening in slow motion around Dean. He could see the gravel, exploding from under the black car tires, as it raced in his direction; he could hear Ben's scream from inside the truck, all the while praying that the kid remained there rather than make some wild attempt to rescue Dean; he could see the car's license plate as it drove toward him, coming closer and closer. It was an odd plate.

The car was less than ten feet away and closing fast; the front grill was aimed straight at his chest. Then, just as quickly, the driver miraculously regained control of the car's steering. After a quick, sharp turn, the car was once again headed back to the road.

A second later, barely time for Dean to register that he was still in one piece and not splattered all over the dried up grass that neither he or Ben ever bothered to water, Ben's arms were around him. The kid was breathing hard, muttering hairy enough swear words that Dean should've probably rebuked him for using if he hadn't been so stunned by what had just almost happened.

"DICK! What sort of fucking asshole almost runs over a guy in a wheel chair and doesn't even stop?" Ben yelled by his side, furious at a nameless driver that was already long gone. "Are you okay?" The tone was gentle, almost a whisper, the kid's mood changing at a dizzying speed.

Dean nodded, world still playing catch up inside his head. He knew he should be angry at the fact that he had almost died, that he should be scared that Ben would have no one else to care for him if Dean _had_ died. The license plate, however, was the one thing that he couldn't shake off.

A license plate that read like a tombstone. His tombstone. 'DW 1979-2012'

 **≪◇≫**

Dean spat a mixture of saliva and blood on the floor. "You can keep using your tingly toy all day long, for all I care," he went on, panting breathlessly but not flinching as he gazed daggers at Marcus. "But from where I come from, that doesn't even register as torture, you ass."

Marcus grinded his teeth, tossing the taser away. He had to admit, his prisoner was right. Clean methods were just not cutting it. His foot flew out and hit Dean square in the chest, sending him and the chair crashing backwards.

Stunned by the fall, Dean's attitude lost some of its bite as he cried out in pain. With his hands tied behind the chair, Marcus supposed that some of the hunter's fingers might've broken when they took the brunt of Dean's weight in the fall. Served him right.

"Now... we're talking," Dean teased, his words casual even as he gasped in pain. "Even... if you hit like a... pre-school girl."

Marcus crouched by the man's side and grabbed Dean by his short, sweat soaked hair. "The answers I need are inside that head of yours," he hissed between clenched teeth, jerking Dean's head around. "And I'm getting them one way. Or. The. Other," he said, banging Dean's head against the floor with each word out of his mouth.

Dean was finally silent, no more blistering words coming out of his mouth. His accusing eyes had lost their bite as well, unfocused and half closed.

There was blood on his fingers when Marcus let go of Dean's head. He looked at it detachedly before wiping them clean on the man's shirt. Dean's blood looked black against the grey tee-shirt he was wearing, darker than the sweat stains.

It would've been too easy to get the information he needed just by asking Dean. Deep down, Marcus had known that all along.

It was time for more exertive options. "You can come take the samples now," Marcus said to one of the cameras, knowing that Dr. Art was on the other side, waiting for his say so.

The click of the door unlocking echoed through the empty room, nervous footsteps walking hurriedly towards the center. Bound and secured as the prisoner was, the doctor, barely out of school, still approached with care, like he would a cornered, wild animal. In his hands were two syringes; one filled with a slightly yellow liquid, the other one larger, empty.

"Brian, John, get over here," Marcus called out to the guards outside; two large men entered the room immediately. "Pick him up."

Both guards grunted as they picked the chair and its occupant from the floor and settled him upright. Dean was already coming around. His eyes zeroed in almost immediately on the young man in the white lab coat and the sharp needles in his hands.

Dean pulled hard against his restraints again, grunting and stressing the knots in hope for some kind of give from his previous struggles. Finding that there was no physical escape, the steady stream of screamed obscenities and threats to kill them all only increased in volume.

With one nod from Marcus, Brian moved in and threw one meaty arm around Dean's neck. His black eye, barely opened, glinted in satisfaction and there was a smug look on his face.

Barely able to keep on breathing and utterly immobilized, Dean had no choice but to hold still as the trembling young doctor finally managed to plunge the needle into the crook of his arm. Red blood rushed up, filling the container in a matter of seconds. The first sample of many, meant to give some answers that Marcus was sure Dean couldn't provide even if he'd wanted.

The second syringe was easier. Brian moved his arm barely an inch aside, giving room for the young doctor to press the sedative to Dean's neck.

He was out in a matter of seconds.

"Get the van ready. We're moving him to the medical quarters," Marcus ordered. "Dr. Stein will be waiting on him to start the tests."

 **≪◇≫**

"Welcome, gentlemen," a short man with thick brown hair and a green polo shirt greeted them.

The room was big, a conference room of some sorts, something that Bobby had seen in the big, fancy hotels, but never in a private house. The decoration on the wall was about as personal and revealing as that of a hotel as well. Generic black and white photographs of landscapes and indigenous wild animals lined the upper walls at identical intervals. Their silver frames over the magenta walls made it look like a police lineup, rather than art.

There were no windows in that room and from the sounds he could hear on the other side, it was part of some bigger room. It had a certain cavernous feeling about it. It made Bobby shiver, despite the amount of people gathered there.

The place was filled with hunters and a few 'procurers of rare objects', the likes of Bela Talbot, that he'd crossed paths with before. Bobby had given up on any kind of exact head count but of those present, he recognized at least twenty of them. Of those, half he knew to be good and fairly trustworthy; the other half, he wouldn't turn his back on, knowing a knife would find its way there. They exchanged polite nods, before each taking a seat.

All the chairs, covered with soft material that matched the color on the walls, were facing a white screen. And in front of it, under a carefully planned spotlight, their host.

"Gentlemen." The curious crowd quieted almost immediately as he called their attention. "You are all here because I need someone with your level of expertise to find something for me," the man began as the room was plunged in darkness. "Something very rare."

Bobby took advantage of the dark to take a better look around, figure his chances of slipping away unnoticed. There was only one door to get in or out of that room. Through the opening, Bobby could glimpse the entry hall from where they'd come and the start of a flight of stairs that led to a second floor. Silhouetted against the dark, Bobby could still see the two security guards posted there, making sure that no one wandered very far from that room.

Bobby slid down into his comfortable chair. He had no other choice but to hear what that fool had to say.

Up ahead, an old picture torn around the edges filled the white screen. A sepia toned image of a rusty iron spike, about four inches in length with a rounded head, quickly sending the large gathering of hunters into a crescendo murmuring.

Their host eyed the crowd with a smirk. "I trust you all recognize what this is?"

The first image was replaced by the inside of a church. In the center of the picture, there was a glass box on display. Inside, sitting on a green velvet pillow, rested a similar spike to the one on the first image. Two more glass boxes were shown, one with a golden crown laden with precious stones and the last one with a horse's bridle.

"You want one of the Holy nails?" one the hunters asked, speaking above the whispered conversations.

"Precisely," the man said, signaling someone in the back of the room to turn the lights back on. "Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, was rumored to have found the True Cross, after which she took all four Holy nails to her home, in Constantinople. The crown, initially a royal helmet that she ordered to be made, and the bridle, were the result of the melting of two of these nails."

There were a couple of nervous coughs in the room and one badly disguised chuckle. Bobby looked around, searching the faces of the other hunters.

He knew what they were all thinking. Every hunter worth his salt knew about the lore surrounding the Holy nails, about how Constantine had used them to turn the tide of war. The nails used at _the_ crucifixion held great power. Something like that, in today's world, would be like the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Even if all the lore around them was nothing but crap, the mere fact of possessing the genuine article could move mountains, as faith often did.

It wasn't even a question of them, _any_ of them, falling in to the wrong hands... there were no right hands for that sort of power.

The good news was that every hunter also knew that every Holy nail on display to the general public was as fake as Santa's beard.

"Those are all fakes," Bobby informed the man, just to be sure. After his little speech, even if this guy had nothing to do with Dean's disappearance, they would still need to keep an eye on him. Crap.

As if they didn't have enough to do keeping the world from ending at the hands of angels and demons...

"I know," he said, looking in Bobby's direction, carefully analyzing him.

Bobby held his ground. There was no way for the man to know who he was or what Bobby was really doing there, but he couldn't help but feel uncomfortable under the other man's careful scrutiny. In fact, if Bobby didn't know better, he would say that their host knew _exactly_ who he was.

"However," the man went on, raising his voice to capture the attention of all in the room. "The money I offer to the first among you who can bring me the authentic one…" his gaze fell back on Bobby as he finished, "is very real, I assure you."

The room was suddenly alive with anxious chatter. Bobby could already see the glinting eyes of the rest of the hunters, thinking about the easy money that could be made at that poor sucker's expense.

Bobby, however, wasn't so sure that was the case. He had stumbled across too many people with more money than sense and all of them insisted on treating the supernatural things of this world like toys and trinkets, objects of fun and curiosity.

This man's interest in the matter was nothing like that. And he appeared to be far too well informed.

"And how will you recognize the real deal?" Bobby felt compelled to ask. He was truly curious because, honestly, old, rusty nails was something he had all over his house. If any would do, he'd be happy to supply a few.

Their host smiled, knowing perfectly well the effect that his next words would have. "I know of someone who will recognize the genuine item."

Bobby arched an eyebrow. As far as he knew, the only experts in the matter were hunters, and none that he knew of gave the Holy Nails that much importance. Sure, the man could call in some dusty old college professor to tell him whether a specific piece of metal was from the right year and model, but to say for sure which nail had been used on Christ's body and which had been used on some fish stand at the market place? It was impossible.

"You got Jesus Christ on your payroll too?" one of the other hunters threw in, apparently coming to the same conclusion as Bobby.

The others sniggered. Just as Bobby had suspected, not a single one of them was taking this request seriously.

"Better, an angel," Marcus said matter of factly. "And I have an... expert on the matter."

Bobby's eyes met Marcus' as he said those words. Judging by the smug look the man's face, Bobby knew exactly of whom he was talking about.

 **≪◇≫**

They had picked a factory warehouse, closed for the day, to have the meeting. 'Money' guy, Jacob, owned the place and had offered it so that they could have some privacy.

It lent a level of secrecy and clandestinity to the whole thing that gave Dean's skin goosebumps.

He and Ben had been the first ones to arrive. Old habits died hard and there was no harm in either being careful of your surroundings or being prepared for all eventualities.

Before either of them set foot outside the car, as an extra measure of caution, Dean drove the perimeter of the warehouse, slowly, taking in the piled boxes and abandoned machinery. The factory seemed to be dedicated to furniture construction, the cheap kind, made primarily of soft woods like pine and particle board, that roles off assembly lines at the rate of hundreds per hour, not built to last. Outside, there were mostly empty delivery trucks.

Parking at the back, Dean turned off the truck's lights and sat in the dark for awhile, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the anorexic moon light that shone that night. They were in the middle of nowhere, nothing but the sound of cicadas for company.

In his old life, Dean would have been certain that this whole set up had been a trap. Trusting his instincts, he'd have walked into that warehouse armed to his teeth; ready to face whatever fugly thing lay in wait and trying to kill him. But this wasn't that life and he worked hard to push those instincts down, to silence them.

Now, he wasn't _walking_ anywhere.

Now, Dean pulled his chair from behind the driver's seat and maneuvered his half-working body into it, as he waited for Ben to lift up the heavy folding doors so that he could roll inside.

The lights had been left on for them. An open invitation to make themselves at home.

Inside, the place was packed with construction materials on one side and closed boxes with finished furniture on the other. Row upon row of wooden boxes and metal structures lined the inside of the building, each creating several corridors. From above, Dean was sure the place would look like a maze.

Their destination was easy to guess. It was the only room in the place, three walls raised at the far left corner of the warehouse. Outside, on the door, a silver plate read 'Board Room' in black letters. Someone had crossed the 'R's and replaced the 'A' for an 'E' so that it read 'Boredoom' instead.

Looking inside, Dean could understand why the workers there would think that. It was obviously the place were staff meetings were held. Tall, grey file cabinets, like dull guardians surrounded the tables lined up in a crooked circle in the middle. The walls were decorated with self-achievement and encouragement posters, mixed with candid pictures of several different people. The workers, Dean could only assume.

The white board hanging at one end of the room had a scribbled message of ' _Get your call sheets in by 5!'_ ' in hurried handwriting; an unfinished game of tic-tac-toe and a couple of choice words decorated the rest of the board.

"Depressing enough," Dean assessed, earning a chuckle from Ben.

"Yeah, well, it's what was available," Ben explained. Out of habit, he went around making room for Dean's chair, so that he could roam freely across the interior. There wasn't that much space for maneuvering anyway.

"'Money' man owns this?" Dean asked, still assessing his surroundings.

Ben nodded. "He's working on a more permanent place, but says that for the time being, we can use the warehouse after working hours."

"Very generous of him," Dean muttered. It wasn't quite sarcasm, just... healthy distrust. He wondered how the man would feel if he knew that most of hunting training involved destroying things messily.

In his life, Dean had encountered very few people genuinely interested in helping others just for the sake of it. If he was to be honest with himself, Dean would say that he hadn't met any outside of family and friends.

There was always an angle, always a catch, always some profit to be made at the end of the run. This mysterious millionaire turned temporary teacher who had serendipitously turned up at Ben's school could prove to be the exception to the rule. But Dean seriously doubted that.

 **≪◇≫**

To the general hunting community, angels were like fairies or flying horses: cute stories that people who knew nothing about reality told their little kids when they went to sleep. There were very few who had dealt with angels in their lives, fewer still that even knew that they existed. And none of those were in that room. Except for Bobby.

"You're an id'jit," Bobby couldn't help saying. Unlike the other hunters, he knew that the real reason of the man's idiocy wasn't believing that something that didn't exist was real and capable of being summoned. It was the fact that he, like so many idiots with more money than sense before him, believed that powerful beings were toys that he could use at his own fashion and whim. Sam and Dean had told him about the preacher's wife who had tried to control a reaper with some base-level spell and a pretty cross. This guy was even a bigger idiot if he thought he could try the same with an angel.

The man's fake smile dropped, face turning stormy and dangerous. Bobby could see that this was not a man used to having people pointing out his mistakes to his face.

"That might be so," their host eventually said, turning his back on the rest of the hunters and effectively dismissing them. "But that is not of your concern. Bring me a true Holy nail... or don't bother coming back."

Bobby looked around one more time. The meeting had been too quick, and the house was too big for him to have any inkling as to whether or not Dean was there. He needed more time; he needed a chance to slip away unnoticed by the ever present guards. This could be their only chance of looking for Dean in there.

There weren't that many ways to summon an angel. In truth, there wasn't even a single one that didn't depend on the angel's willingness to show up. Hell, Pamela had aid a hefty price for forcing one to show up. And even for any kind of summoning, whoever did it needed to know the angel's exact name in order to call him.

Back in the day, when Dean still had no idea of what or who Castiel was, Bobby had helped him 'summon' the angel. But Castiel had only showed up at his own pace, when he had managed to procure himself a vessel. And even then, Castiel had come because he had _wanted_ to talk to Dean.

So, no, as far as Bobby knew, there was no guaranteed way to get any face-to-face time with just any generic angel. You had to either be a person of interest for those feathery fellas, or you'd have to have a personal link with one of them.

If there was anyone on Earth that could claim to have both, that person was Dean. And if this guy was this sure that he could get himself an angel, as easily as ordering pizza... well, two plus two was an easy enough add.

And that was why Bobby knew that he and Sam had come to the right place. Because this man was certain that he could get himself an angel; because he had in his possession the one person who could get him an angel. One _specific_ angel.

Now, all Bobby and Sam needed to find was where that bastard was keeping Dean and find a way to—

The cold feeling at the back of his neck was not something that Bobby would easily dismiss. A lifetime as a hunter had taught him to trust that feeling; it had saved his life many times. He turned to find their host's eyes nailed on his back, carefully examining him. A tall security guard, dressed all in black and wearing an earpiece, was whispering something to his boss's ear. Whatever he said, it made Marcus smile, a vicious twist of his mouth that gave Bobby goosebumps.

Bobby was about to follow the procession of hunters out of the room when he heard his name. "Mr. Singer," Marcus called out. "A word, if you may."

Bobby looked around, accessing his any possible escape route. With only one exit out of that room and every security guards' eyes on him, he had little choice but stay put and face whatever was coming his way. Who knows? Maybe he'd get lucky and they would grab him and put him in the same place where they were keeping Dean. The fact that Marcus knew his name hardly surprised the older hunter.

"Please, tell Sam that he's free to come inside with you next time you drop by," Marcus said with a knowing smile that screamed sarcasm with every pearly tooth. "It's always better than walking around aimlessly around other people's private properties without their consent, wouldn't you say?"

The nerve on the man's balls was churning its way through Bobby's stomach, enough to make the older hunter forget all about caution and specific goals and just rip the man's throat out. To his credit, he merely nodded and walked out. Inside his chest, his heart was hammering like a racehorse on ecstasy. He fully expected to arrive to an empty car.

 **≪◇≫**

Dean looked at the watch on his wrist and cleaned his palms on his jeans, feeling the cut on the center of the left one sting with the contact. His hands were sweaty, his heart hammering harder as the appointed hour drew nearer. Dean hadn't been around other hunters since Sam's death. He'd left the life behind and, with it, most of the contacts he'd made in that world.

When Bobby too had died, Dean Winchester and the hunting world had stopped crossing paths entirely.

Sound echoed through the tall building, magnified by the industrial concrete floors and metal walls, alerting Dean and Ben to the first arrivals of the evening. Dean didn't recognize any of them, but from the way the three boys and four young girls waved at Ben, Dean figured those were the would-be students.

"They're all so young," Dean whispered before they were within hearing range. "You didn't tell me this was going to be kindergarten class."

Ben threw him a look. Dean knew that look well; he remembered that look from Sam's teen years, when he'd started to confront their father.

"They're all older than me, you know?" he let out, heading out to greet the new arrivals. Which... really didn't make Dean feel any more comfortable with Ben's presence.

Dean knew Ben was trying to grow up fast, that he was tired of being a kid, of being treated like a kid; he figured all teens went through that, only, in Ben's case, his goals were a little more risky than just getting a car or banging his first chick.

Ben was fascinated with the hunting world. Where Dean saw nothing but pain, blood and loss, Ben saw heroes, guts and glory.

The large door to the parking lot screeched as it opened one more time, admitting familiar faces this time around.

 **D** avid Joshua, with his large frame and baldhead, was easy to spot at a distance. Always larger than life itself, the man hadn't aged a day since Dean had last seen him.

 **A** nne Oliver was walking beside him, chatting animatedly, fiery red hair that went well with her fiery disposition.

 **D** aniel Johnson, always the recluse, walked behind them, head turning and assessing the place, much like Dean himself had done, hands stuffed deeply inside his leather jacket, fingers probably playing over the edge of his knife.

"Dean Win-motherfucking-chester," Joshua greeted as soon as he spotted Dean. "Long time no see man," he said, throwing a heartfelt arm forward and grasping Dean by the wrist. A warrior's greeting, even though Dean had long stopped being one.

Dean was just glad the man's eyes hadn't lingered more than five seconds on his wheelchair.

Not like Anne was doing.

"I... I didn't know," she offered, crouching in front of Dean to meet him eye to eye.

He hated when people did that. It served only to remind Dean that he could no longer get up to meet them back in equal terms.

"Was it... were you hunting when it happened?" she asked, despite the cold look that Dean was giving her. The woman was a terrific hunter, but clueless when it came to human skills.

"Polo accident," Dean supplied dryly, turning to greet Johnson even as Joshua dragged Anne inside, hastily telling her to _'shut the fuck up_!'. "Daniel."

The other man nodded, shortly, curt and dry, barely stopping as he went inside. Dean smirked. Silent and efficient, just the way a hunter should be. Just like his father had been.

Dean followed him into the office, watching the packed room. There was a certain feeling of anxiety, or baited breath just before something outstanding happened.

Dean blinked and suddenly he was someplace else.

A house. No… smaller than that, something barely standing on its own. An old shed that smelled of gun oil and stale air.

Dark.

There were cracks on the wooden walls, big enough to allow some light from outside to sneak in. There was someone sitting in one of the darker corners of the room, elbows resting on bony knees, barely moving.

Sam.

Dean shook his head, the 'boredom' room materializing again around him. This was not the time and place for his mind to wander off on him like that, even if it seemed like he couldn't stop it lately. And the oddest part was that he couldn't even pinpoint where or when these images that came to his mind had happened, or if they'd happened at all. Maybe he was imagining things… maybe he was starting to lose his mind.

Finding Ben's face in middle of the small crowd, Dean relaxed. He wasn't sure what was supposed to happen now, but he couldn't help but smile back at the beaming grin that Ben threw his direction. The boy's excitement over this was contagious. "Guess we should get started then," Dean muttered, reluctantly taking his spot at the front of the small crowd.

"Not waiting for your host? I'm wounded," a male voice, filled with mirth, sounded from the door Dean had left open.

Dean looked up, watching the new arrival. Judging from his words, Jacob Michaels, _the Third_.

"Dean Winchester," the man went on, ignoring all others to clasp Dean's hand. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you."

Dean shook the man's hand. It was all he needed to confirm what he had already suspected as soon as the 'man' had walked over the line of salt that Dean had spread over the threshold, pass the devil's trap drawn in invisible ink on the floor and into the room. He wondered if the others could see it as easily as Dean did.

"Ben has told me all about you," Jacob went on, one arm thrown around Ben's shoulders, in a gesture of far too much familiarity.

Dean's eyes hardened, his hands itching to pull Ben away from that man's touch. "Can't say the same about you," Dean said quietly, reassessing the situation. "But then again, Ben doesn't really know all about _what_ you are, does he?"

It wasn't exactly a hostile greeting, but it was a challenge of sorts, and everyone, hunter and amateur alike, got the message. All casual conversation died until the most tangible silence descended. From the corner of his eyes, Dean could see the other hunters tensing, ready to go for whatever weapons he was sure they had concealed on their persons.

Ben was looking at Dean pointedly. Unlike the others, who had learned to be cautious of the things they did not know, the only thing that Ben could see was Dean, being rude to the man responsible for making his dream possible. "Deeean..."

"He never asked," Jacob said with a smile, not even bothering to deny Dean's claim.

In a matter of seconds, all three hunters in the room had their weapons out, two guns and a crossbow, all trained on Jacob.

"None of that is gonna work on something like him," Dean warned them, his eyes never leaving Jacob. He was too close to Ben, too within reach, too easy for one stray shot to hit the kid rather than the intended target.

"And none is necessary," Jacob said, his arms spread to the side, looking as harmless as he could muster. "I mean harm to no one in this room. My kin are not monsters."

"What _kin_ is yours again?" Joshua hissed, ignoring Jacob's claim of being harmless.

"I am an angel of the Lord," Jacob said solemnly, eliciting stunned gasps from just about everyone in the room. It was all Dean could do to not roll his eyes.

Angels did seem to have a penchant for overly dramatic entrances.

 **≪◇≫**

The older hunter had no memory of making the trip back to the car. One look inside, however, and he was able to put his worries at rest. Sam was waiting for him, sitting in the driver' seat, holding something to his face.

"Couldn't stay put, could you?"

Sam looked up, still holding the bandana that was soaking up the bleeding gash in his forehead. "What gave it away?" he asked with no mirth.

"The asshole who owns the place, Marcus somethingoranother, ' _the third'_ ," Bobby said dryly, opening the door and pushing Sam over to the passenger' side. "He made sure to lemme know that the only reason why you weren't dog food at this point was because he didn't want it."

Sam looked ahead, furious. "The place has more security than a fucking prison," he confessed. "I thought that maybe I could catch some suspicious coming and goings from the guards, or maybe a structure that stood out, some place where he could keep Dean."

"And?"

"And I found out that the security people in this place like their taser guns way too much and have no problem in kicking a guy when he's already down," he added with a wince, pressing the cloth harder against his forehead. "What about you? Did you manage to find anything?"

Bobby shook his head, starting the car. He couldn't wait to put that place in his rearview mirror. "He knew who I was, and I bet you he knows we're looking for Dean," Bobby let out through clenched teeth. "He knows everything."

Sam blinked. "How?"

"He has Dean," Bobby said.

  
 **≪◇≫**  
I thought you guys were too busy upstairs to come and play with us humans anymore," Dean said bitterly.

The last angel he had dealt with had abandoned him when Dean had needed him the most. And before that, honestly, every angel that he'd met had turned out to be a dick... even the female ones.

"Things are not going well. That is one of the reasons why I am here," Jacob said, casting a look to the rest of the room. "But perhaps we should discuss these matters in private."

"There is nothing to discuss," Dean said sternly, turning to the rest of people gathered there. "So, here's your lesson number one: just because it looks human, doesn't mean it is. Class dismissed. You can all go home now," Dean said, grabbing a gaping-mouthed Ben and pulling him towards the door. "Don't call us, we'll call you," he added, nodding towards the three hunters as he went out.

"What are you doing?" Ben hollered as soon as he could find his voice. "How do you know what he is?"

"Dean hasn't told you all about himself either, has he? About how deep his connection with my kin goes?" Jacob said, stopping Dean on his tracks before he could exit. "I do believe that you'll want to hear what I have to say," the angel said, snapping his fingers.

Dean looked around, anger building up inside his chest. Everyone but he and Ben had disappeared. Jacob had gotten them the privacy that he'd wanted.

"What did you do to them?"

"Don't worry... each and everyone of them is now at home. They're safe," the angel assured them.

It wasn't enough to convince Dean. "T'hell do you want from me?" Dean hissed, turning his wheelchair around. "Did Cass send you here?"

"I want nothing from you," Jacob said without bitterness. "And Cass hasn't been around to send anyone anywhere for some time now. Some believe that Castiel took our Father's example to heart and fled; others believe he is simply dead."

Dean's heart froze inside his chest. He had thought that he was done with losing people in his life. Apparently, he was wrong. "What happened?" he whispered.

"Raphael happened," Jacob said without a hint of emotion. "Castiel wasn't strong enough."

Dean remembered that particular archangel well. He had been the one in charge of protecting Chuck, the prophet. He had been the one to kill Castiel when Lucifer was freed from his cage. It seemed that Raphael had acquired a taste for it.

"So what are you truly doing here?" Dean asked, tired of covert agendas and hidden facts. He'd gotten his fill of that when he and Sam were struggling to stop the world from ending.

"I am recruiting," Jacob said, turning slowly to face Dean squarely. "More and more battles for Heaven's leadership are being fought on Earth rather than in Heaven and we are in ne—"

"You want bodies... angel-condoms to die for you," Dean finished for him.

"Do you understand the consequences if Raphael and his followers win?" Jacob said, his voice growing in tone and power. The man himself seemed to expand and rise taller. "He plans to make the battle between Michael and Lucifer happen as it was supposed to happen, as it was ordered by our Father."

Dean swallowed hard. A nano-sized part of him was happy to hear those words, knowing that such battle could never happen with Sam trapped in a cage. But the thought of freeing Sam was nothing but a dream, an unreal expectation that would never be; that Dean could never allow to be.

His happiness against the survival of Mankind presented no contest at all. "And how does he plan to do that? Both his fighters are way beyond his reach," Dean asked.

"Don't fool yourself," Jacob answered, walking around the room like a lecturer, knowing fully well that he had a captive audience. "There is no place out of reach for the one ruling Heaven... he will pull Lucifer up, alongside your brother... and he will have his battle as it should've happened."

"What do you mean?"

"He wants Michael inside you, using his original vessel," Jacob said, pausing near Ben, a reassuring hand on the boy's shoulder as Ben gasped in fear. "He wants everything to go as planned this time around. You won't be as lucky as before."

Dean remembered the night he had told Ben and Lisa all about the averted apocalypse, about how everyone kept telling him and Sam that they were destined to fight one another, that they were to be used as puppets in the battle between Michael and Lucifer. About the way Sam had died to stop it from happening and how many millions of lives had been saved on the day Dean's brother had jumped into Hell.

He had scared them that day, zoning out in the middle of the supermarket, lost inside his head until he had come to, cuddled in Lisa's arms in between the vegetable stand and the canned beans. There was a smell of freshly baked bread in the air, but all that Dean could smell was sulphur and ashes. Ben had been crying softly to one side and everyone was staring. In the end, they had all gone home with red eyes and Dean's promise that he would let them help him carry the load.

That had been the day that Dean had decided to give himself a second chance and take the love those two people were offering him. That had been four years ago, mere days before Lisa had died.

"So what are you really doing here?" Dean asked, his suspicions making blood run like ice inside his veins. He'd seen the way this Jacob person was always circling Ben, touching him, eyeing the boy carefully. In his head, Dean already had a pretty good idea about what the angel was after.

"I have been searching for perfect matches for some of my stronger brothers, those who cannot take just any vessel," Jacob announced gravely. "Ben is one of the best I have found so far. The perfect vessel."

"No," Dean said flatly, his tone showing he would brook no argument. "You can't have him. Pick another one."

The mere idea was enough to send shivers up and down Dean's spine. Ben was just a kid. His kid.

"Dean!" Ben gasped.

At first, Dean eluded himself into thinking that Ben was gasping in fright; that he was calling his name in search for help, reassurance that Dean would never allow for something like this to happen to him.

Dean was wrong.

One look into Ben's face and Dean could see all the fascination, all the romantic notions that Ben had about hunting and angels arising and shinning in his eyes. Ben was seeing this as an opportunity, as his way into the fight.

"No, Ben," Dean said one more time, turning his chair to face the teen. "You have no idea what he's asking you to do."

"Yes I do," Ben answered passionately. "Angels, dad... he's asking me to become one and help in the fight against the end of the world."

"He's asking you to give your life for a battle that isn't yours to fight! He's asking you to die, Ben!"

"I'm asking him to embrace his fate," Jacob went on quietly, his words meant for Ben's ears rather than to argue with Dean. "So that you won't have to meet yours." It wasn't quite an accusation, not quite a challenge, but it still sounded like both to Dean's ears.

"It doesn't work like that... what about the blood lines and all that crap? Ben's just a regular kid," Dean pointed out.

Jacob's smile was as grading as Ben's scowl at being called 'regular'. Like it was somehow offensive _not_ to be a freak.

"Even after all these years, you still have no idea, do you?"

"About what?" Dean asked, defiant. From the self-contented smirk on the angel's face, Dean already had a pretty idea what he was going on about. Dean had always had his suspicions, but the need to confirm one way or the other ebbed away as his connection with Ben grew.

"Ben's your son, Dean," Jacob announced all the same. "He shares the same blood line that made you the perfect vessel for Michael. That line must always be preserved."

Ben's round and shiny eyes made him look as young as he was.

To him, this surely was a night of earth-shattering revelations. And that, Dean knew without a doubt, had been Jacob's purpose all along.

The more emotional Ben was, the easier it would be to accomplish his task and get the kid to do what he wanted. But not if Dean could help it.

"There are no parental consent issues here, Dean." Jacob pointed out. "It is still the boy's choice."

Arriving early had its perks.

And one of them was to be prepared for everything. Including deceptive angels.

"Yeah... well, tell it to someone who gives a fuck, asshat," Dean hissed, pressing his bloody hand against the sigil he had drawn on one of the walls of the room.

Dean had forgotten how bright it was when an angel was kicked out of the room. When his vision cleared, Ben was looking at him. The disappointment in the kid's eyes was a physical thing that punched Dean in the gut. It hurt to see that look in his son's eyes. God… his son!

The electric jolt up his spine that followed was sudden enough to push a pained gasp out of Dean's mouth.

No matter how much he thought that he was growing used to them, the out-of-nowhere spasms that would sometimes hit Dean's broken spine always managed to catch him unaware.

Ever since the accident, they'd been a constant, unwanted companion, and their impact always surprised him. The doctors had called it electrical short circuits, something about the fact that parts of Dean's nerves still had some juice in them, like a faulty wire with bad connection. Sufficient to be painful as hell, but just not enough for him to use his leg muscles.

To Dean they were nothing but reminders of his failure to help Lisa. A reminder of what had happened that night.

 **≪◇≫**

Deep down, Marcus had always known that angels and Man weren't as far apart as the rest of the world believed it. Deep down he had always known that there was a link somewhere in the grey areas of science, faith and mystery.

People could become angels; angel could become people; both could become one. And in his possession, Marcus had the one man, of a whole planet of lowlifes, sleazy and smelly human beings, that had the potential to become the greatest angel of them all: Michael.

Now, it was only a matter or understanding what made Dean so special and replicate it.

At first, everyone had believed it would be as easy as analyzing a blood sample; that once the process had been completed, all the answers would just present themselves.

Life, however, seldom worked like that.

They had studied Dean Winchester in depth. And the number of answers produced was far from satisfying.

Even before they had started with the more invasive methods, Dean Winchester's body was a puzzle in itself.

As far as anyone could figure, the branded handprint on his left shoulder was nothing more than that: scar tissue in the form of a human right hand, result from some sort of burn. As to how it had been made, no one would venture a guess. One thing they could all agree to: the being to whom the hand-impression belonged had to have been burning painfully hot when the mark was done, so painfully that it would've been impossible for any human to have gripped Dean's shoulder at that point. In a burn that severe, the nerve damage alone would've prevented any sort of grasp, much less a strong one. So, they had concluded, whatever had made it, it was either dead or far from being human at all.

The marks in the ribs were a similar mystery. No one could seem to determine which language they were written in, or even if that was a language at all. And as to how they had been made without leaving behind any sort of surgical scar, no one seemed to know either.

Blood work, spinal tap, MRI's and CAT scans had all proven pointless. DNA testing had revealed nothing of importance that far, but none of the geneticists were giving up on the matter yet.

The man's insides were a study in boring, healthy normalcy, even if one of the doctors kept insisting that, for all intents and purposes, Dean Winchester's organs had the same decay level as that of a three year old.

The man was clearly not an infant, that much was proven by the amount of damage he had been able to inflict on the security surrounding him from the moment he was taken to the time he was sedated.

The only thing that Marcus had left was the man's brain. And he had decided to have a look around on the inside before resorting to cutting him open and letting the doctors have a look for themselves.

The man's mind had proven to be as complicated and shrouded in mystery as the body; every though, every memory... it was like a maze. There were parts so deeply ingrained and hidden that Marcus suspected not even Dean himself had access; everything else was too twisted and well protected for Marcus to simply wander in there and grab what he needed.

The distractions that Dean had in place to hide his true thoughts were nothing short of phenomenal. Layer upon layer of futility that was designed to tire the mind before any real emotion could be reached. A defense mechanism, Marcus suspected, not from external attacks like his, but from Dean himself.

Not that visions of strippers dressed as slutty angels and even sluttier demons weren't entertaining in themselves, but they were not the answers that Marcus was looking for.

' _Weaken him with a trauma'_ , a psychiatrist had advised. Something that would leave Dean vulnerable and open to suggestion. ' _Make his psyche bleed and the mind will open'_.

Dean himself had provided them with the subject matter to get them started.

 **≪◇≫**

It was meant to be a romantic date, just the two of them. A simple get away from the day to day life, a chance to enjoy each other's company without having to worry about nosy neighbors that were still far too curious about Dean's origins despite the fact that he and Lisa had fed them all with the same bogus story about his failed career as a door–to-door salesman. It was also a chance to give Ben a break, since he was still slightly icked about the notion of his mother having a boyfriend. Even if said boyfriend was Ben's personal hero.

Death, Dean realized, followed him around like his own shadow. This time, however, there were no monsters attacking them, no dark enemy coming straight from his past in search of revenge; it wasn't even violence caused by humans. It wasn't violence at all.

Just a tree.

It was late at night. The road had been free and clear when they had driven by the same exact place just a few hours before. Lisa had been laughing at something Dean had said. He could no longer remember what.

Dean swerved the car to avoid hitting the huge tree trunk that had cut the road in half. Had it been the Impala... he might've even made it.

When he woke up next, the dashboard was doing a great job at trying to break him in half and Lisa... Lisa was bleeding out by his side.

His fingers could reach her enough to brush her cold arm. But try as he may, he couldn't stretch or wiggle free far enough to stop the bleeding in her stomach. The only thing he could do was sit and watch as her pretty green dress slowly turn red. She had said the dress reminded her of his eyes, that she had bought it because of that. She should've bought it black, to match his soul, Dean remember thinking.

The hours that followed, as they waited for a rescue that neither was sure would come, would forever be indelibly, horrifically and painfully etched in Dean's mind, even if some of them were a bit fuzzy.

He remembered random details. Random flashes of images. Things his senses had captured even if his brain hadn't fully registered.

The smell of copper and rain inside the car, as his and Lisa's blood mingled, pooling on the floorboard.

The sound of her breathing as it grew more and more labored as time passed.

The feeling of bone grinding against bone each time he tried to turn on his seat to reach her.

The light of daybreak reflecting on Lisa's brown eyes.

The way her lips had mouthed 'I love you' over and over like it was the only oxygen she needed, until she could no longer draw a breath.

The salty taste of tears on his lips as he prayed a thousand prayers to Castiel to help Lisa and not a single one was answered.

The jarring feeling of electric saws cutting into the car frame as if they were cutting into his bone, as rescuers worked to get them out of that mangled, metal coffin.

When Dean had woken in the hospital, days later, he had exactly five minutes of happy delusion, thinking that Lisa had survived as well. And then everything was shattered with one look at Ben's puffed eyes and miserable countenance.

When the doctors had told him that he would never walk again, Dean figured it wasn't nearly punishment enough for what he had done.

The electric jolts had started a month after that.

 **≪◇≫**

"Is he ready?" Marcus asked dispassionately as he watched the spectacle before him; the machinery alone was intimidating, but in the middle of it all, it was the simple glass with the tea that scared him the most.

"He's ready sir," one of the men in charge assured him. "All you need to do is drink this and close your eyes."

 _And you'll be inside his head._

The first time the notion had been presented to him, Marcus had laughed. It was something far too deep in the realm of science fiction for him to believe it could work. But the fact was, it did.

The machine, 'Bogeyman' as the staff had taken to calling it, was a creation born out of Marcus ingenuity and his ability to combine the talents of his science team and the knowledge of the hunters he'd hired. It worked; everyone assured him of that.

Still, offering himself as a guinea pig hadn't really excite the millionaire. It hadn't gone without consideration to order one of his lackeys go in his stead; test it before hand, make sure it was safe. But the truth was, Marcus didn't trust anyone else to complete this task. This one was his; his destiny. If anyone was going to explore Dean's mind, it would be him alone.

One of the hunters Marcus' employed had extensive knowledge in venoms and herbs that allowed for a person to walk in another's dreams, to even control them. All he had to do was grab hold of some rare, African root and get his hands on a creature the hunters called 'Djinn'. That had been the easy part.

The hard part had been to create something that would turn those dreams into images and record them, or else Marcus would have to trust his memory alone to get all the information out.

The result had been the bulky machinery that now whined and whirled in the room where Marcus currently stood. It was the hub of all the activity surrounding Marcus hopes and dreams.

Long fiber optic cables ran the length of the space before disappearing under the table, sneaking in through a hole cut in the middle of the aluminum platform and connecting with the man's spinal cord, each individual bundle serving as a particular kind of stimulus meant to turn dream into reality, at least for the one wired. The Bogeyman's spider web.

The blue glow of the translucent cord gave the place an eerie, sterile appearance. Marcus figured it was appropriate to the illicit work they were doing there. All that was missing were the big computer servers with random blinking lights and they could be in any science fiction story of their choosing.

"Hook me up," Marcus commanded. Soon, he would be in the world he created for Dean Winchester, playing his part.

 **≪◇≫**

"We need to find a way to get in there!" Sam voiced one more time. It wasn't that he was having trouble in getting Bobby to agree with him; it was just that neither could see a way to do it, or even confirm if Dean was indeed inside that particular house.

A quick search in the property tax records had confirmed them the owner's name, one Marcus Finnegan. That piece of information lead to more research, revealing that the man had more properties than Las Vegas had light bulbs. There were factories, warehouses, apartment buildings, office buildings, malls, a couple of theaters and even a private clinic. And Dean, they came to a sinking realization, could be in any one of them.

The clinic, being the one with easiest access, had been the first place they had investigated. Bobby threw his best hissy fit in the waiting room, while Sam hacked into their patient files. There was no one even matching Dean's description, no suspiciously locked rooms, nothing out of the ordinary happening there.

It had been a wasted day.

"We could try calling Castiel," Bobby suggested, even if the angel had been ignoring their prayers so far. "Again."

Sam shook his head. Castiel's priorities had changed dramatically in the year that had passed. No longer was he the angel that they could count on to do the right the thing. These days, Castiel was working with demons and determined to open the gates of Purgatory; he no longer took the time to concern himself with anything other than his victory over Raphael. His human friends ranked very low in his busy schedule.

Castiel's change in priorities meant more than the fact that they couldn't count on his help to find Dean. Without his aid, Sam and Bobby were back doing things the old way: phone calls to every contact in their books and old fashioned leg work. It took them twice as long to get anywhere, time that they could not afford. It also meant that, for every day that they spent searching for Dean, it was one day less that they had to stop Castiel's and Crowley's plans.

Dean's disappearance had been so poorly timed (if there ever was a 'right' time for such a thing) that Castiel and Crowley had been Sam and Bobby's first suspects.

However, the one angel still answering their calls, Balthazar, had defused that idea. He'd assured them that Crowley was otherwise occupied and that the last time Castiel had laid eyes on Dean had been at the hospital, where they had parted ways, leaving behind a Lisa and Ben with their minds wiped clean of any memory of their time with the older Winchester.

Dean wasn't dead either. Balthazar had thrown them a 'freebie' as he had called it, and checked for them.

"Wouldn't matter," Sam said quietly, his tone oozing defeat. "Castiel wouldn't be able to find Dean either way." His hands moved slowly up to press on against his chest.

"You think the sigils are still there?" Bobby asked. After all, Sam had gotten himself a brand new body little over a year before.

"Mine? I don't know," Sam confessed, thinking back to the days when he had first returned and drawing a blank. Maybe soulless-him had checked, maybe not. Maybe Castiel gave him new ones when he'd brought him back. "Dean still has his."

That part Sam could be certain of. Balthazar had done his best to find Dean, a week before, when he had first disappeared. The hunter, however, was well hidden from all celestial bodies. Whether that was because of the marks on his ribs or because whoever had him had made sure that nothing could find Dean was irrelevant. At the time, the fact remained that they had to use other means to find and get him back.

Sam was reaching wit's end, one step away from climbing walls and calling Death himself to help him locate Dean, when sheer dumb luck had struck. Marcus himself had led them to him.

The man's connections had spread so far into the hunting community that, at some point, the hunters Marcus had talked to and the collective of hunters that both Sam and Bobby knew, had intersected. It was pure mathematics at work.

Queries about Dean Winchester coming from all sides were bound to call attention to themselves. When the same man asking questions about the Winchesters had put out a prize up for grabs to any hunter that could find him a particular item, Sam and Bobby had taken their chance.

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. All of their lives, they had been trained to fight the supernatural, to deal with every monster in the world. Monsters of the human variety, however, were a subject that Sam always found himself at loss on how to deal with. They couldn't simply storm the place, guns blazing and demand to be taken to Dean, like in a Chuck Norris movie. Even if there was nothing else that Sam would rather do.

"We need to find out exactly where he's keeping Dean," Sam mused, staring at the front gate of Marcus' house. "My bet is that he would keep him as close as possible and, as far as we could see, the man doesn't leave his house ever. We need to get in there and make sure he has Dean, somewhere in that… frigging castle."

"And how do we do that?"

Sam looked around, searching for inspiration in thin air. The car was a mess of old food containers and barely piled books defying gravity at every breath. "A guy like that must have a battalion of servants, right? Maids, gardeners, maintenance, cooks, whathaveyou. I mean, a house that big, he has to."

Bobby nodded. He'd seen a couple while he was there. "What are you thinking exactly?"

Sam smiled, a smirk that was scarily identical to Dean's when he was about to do something really, really stupid.

"I'm thinking about teenagers," Sam replied mysteriously.

 **≪◇≫**

There were dark corners in Dean's mind that Marcus had learned to avoid. The first time he had connected with the other man's memories and ventured aimlessly through a mind that was darker than most, it had nearly cost him his life.

The second he'd taken a drink of that foul tasting tea, Marcus had found himself in a dark alley, surrounded by several men, all of whom had looked suspiciously like deformed versions of Dean himself.  
The smell of blood and piss in the air had been overwhelming and, even though Marcus had known that none of that was real, he still found himself recoiling in disgust and fear.

In the red glow of furiously blinking neon light, Marcus caught a glimpse of the crowd surrounding him. Despite the fact that those men had human features, none of them was actually human.

There were horns and spikes growing from their skin, the texture of which appeared tough as leather; teeth and claws that sprouted randomly from elbows and necks; deformed feet and legs that resembled more hooves than toes.

The resemblance to Dean was also an illusion. They were all wearing masks. Stretched versions of Dean's face, of Dean's skin, over their own horrible and grotesque heads.

Whatever that place was, Marcus vowed never to return there again.

After that, they had devised a plan. Start with a trauma, make their way slowly from there.

They had moved with caution, taken their time.

It had taken Marcus a long time in dreamland to get to the point where he could convince Dean to give him what he wanted.

It was a good thing that in there, inside the mind, time was different. Moving at the speed of thought, one year rolled by in less than a day.

After the dark alley mishap, Marcus no longer ventured out of the light. Later, when he'd come to, he'd told no one why he had pissed himself that first time the machine was connected. He called it a nasty side effect and fired everyone who had seen it happen.

 **≪◇≫**

 _He could feel Lisa's blood, rushing inside her veins. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see it. A living thing, a lustful thing, calling to him, daring him to sink his teeth into its warmth._

 _Dean sunk his teeth into his own lips instead of her neck. His blood tasted of ash, of dead things. Dead, like he was now._

 _Lisa's hand found his arm, concerned fingers brushing against his cold skin. Dean couldn't feel a thing. Only the touch of her red cells, so close to him, so near that all he had to do was reach out and take._

 _Lisa was so concerned about him and he was nothing but a monster._

"Are you okay?" Ben's voice broke through Dean's fogged mind. He sounded more pissed off than worried. "You were doing that zoning-out thing. Again."

Dean blinked, looking around. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"Good," Ben huffed, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "'Cause I wouldn't want to have to make an important decision, like for example, dragging you to the hospital, without having your consent," he went on, belligerent. "You might've pulled some other magic trick out of your hunter's bag of tricks and blown the EMTs to space too."

"Ben..." Dean tried. He knew the kid wouldn't be happy with him. That he would see this as Dean stealing an opportunity from him. "This is not a decision to be made in haste."

Ben nodded, even if Dean could still see the fire in his eyes. He was sure that all it would take was for Jacob to show up when Dean wasn't around and Ben would say yes.

The angel had been smart about the matter. He'd conned his way closer and closer to Ben, earning his trust and wining the boy's favor. If Dean hadn't seen Jacob for what he really was, Ben would've been taken from him without Dean ever knowing.

The notion made him shiver; made him want to hug Ben closer.

But the kid was much too angry with him to allow that. "Let's go home," Dean said instead, waiting for Ben to stop looking at the sigil that Dean had used to cast the angel out and start walking. Dean followed him outside.

Once inside the car, bathed in the pitch-black night, there wasn't much more either of them could do but to watch as the car careened down the road, eating up each yellow center-line, one after the other. Dean's mind was only half focused on the road; the rest was working furiously on a way to convince Ben that it was a bad idea to give in to the angel's request.

"Da—Dean, do angels lie?" Ben asked after awhile.

The question abruptly broke the mesmerizing sound of tires on asphalt. Dean knew that Ben too was mulling over the events of the night in his head. He had expected more argument, more fighting, even more questions about angels and the way things worked when they took a vessel. Ben's choice of question took Dean by surprise just as much as his aborted whisper of 'dad'.

"Not so much as lie, as they conceal the truth," Dean answered, stealing a gaze to see where the teen was going with that question. "At least the ones I knew."

Dean could clearly remember each and every one of the angelic beings that he had encountered.

Uriel, with his sense of self-importance and short temper for the affairs of humans. The way he had betrayed the other angels and killed his own brothers because he had believed that Lucifer had been wronged when cast into Hell, because he'd agreed with the fallen angel that humankind was simply not worth the effort.

Zachariah, middle manager prick who had taken upon himself to force Dean to say yes to Michael. He'd pursued Dean as if there'd been some achievement bonus in store for him if he were the one to broker the deal of the century.

Michael, the head of God's army, so sure of himself and his reasons, so quick to dismiss free will as being of no importance, in his own way as arrogant as Lucifer.

Raphael, Michael's right hand angel, as every bit as self-righteous and as devoid of ethics as his big brother.

Then, there was Anna. She'd been so sweet as a human, and yet once she had her wings back, her grace restored, she'd changed. Fearsome in the worst of ways, she'd become every bit as self-important and overblown as her brethren.

Gabriel, who had escaped to live amongst humans so long ago and who had died for them because he had fallen in love with all of their defects and short-comings.

Balthazar, the angel with no boundaries who saw Earth as his personal playground.

And Castiel. The angel who Dean had thought he had shaped into a better person and who had abandoned him when Dean had needed him the most.

"Do you think Jacob was telling the truth?" Ben went on, his voice tentative and young, so very young. "About us?"

Dean bit his lip, finally understanding what Ben was really asking about. The confirmation that they were related by blood. "Would it matter to you?"

Dean had worked under the assumption that the news had been just as irrelevant for Ben as it had been to him. They already were father and son; a DNA connection wouldn't bring them any closer than what they already were. But maybe he had been wrong; maybe it did matter for Ben.

Maybe the only reason why Ben was with him was because the kid had no other choice after Lisa's death. Once Dean had killed her.

"Yes," Ben whispered, looking through the car window at the black world outside, unaware of how a single word had made Dean's heart stop inside his chest.

"Why?" Dean forced himself to ask. He had no idea what he would do if Ben told him that being his son was the last thing anyone could ever want.

"Because that would make mom a liar."

Oh.

"Who do you trust more?" Dean rasped out. "Your mom or some guy that didn't even tell you about his true intentions?"

Ben looked at him, brown eyes so similar to Lisa's, burrowing into Dean and seizing his breath.

"Mom, of course," Ben answered without hesitation.

Dean smiled. "Then it doesn't matter what Jacob says."

This at least felt like a victory for him and Ben. Jacob could try as hard he wanted, but Dean would not see a rift wedged between him and Ben.

"But I do like the idea of being your son," Ben added. "I mean, of being from your blood line," he amended.

Somehow, he had managed to make it sound like an honor, like something to cherish. Dean could only see it as a curse.

≪◇≫

  
Two years ago Sam had suffered a rather traumatizing experience. His body had been hijacked by a would-be witch kid, while Sam was left stuck in a short, asthmatic, high school kid's body with a desperate need to stand up for himself.

In an attempt to reach his goal, Gary and his school friends, as patsy's for a demon sent by Lucifer, had used Sam, or rather, his body. They had figured that it would be the easiest way to kill Dean.

And now Sam would be using the same spell to save his brother. Life's little ironies never ceased to amaze him.

The spell had been easy to find. Well, easy enough for someone with Bobby's contacts and with Sam's memory, who had written down most of the incantation he had heard Gary use.

Once they'd acquired the correct words, all they'd left was to pick the right person to make the switch. Ideally, Sam wanted to grab Marcus himself, but the spell required the presence of the two people in close proximity, or at least using something that could be traced back to the bodies involved. There was no way they could ever get near enough Marcus to even snatch a hair out of his head.

Sam's initial inclination had been towards one of the security guards. He kept telling himself that it was because the guards would have free access to every room in the house, and not because switching into the body of another man was less jarring.

While that had made sense, Bobby made him realize that guards were like wolves, they tended to travel in packs and they would be able to sniff out an impostor in no time, especially the highly trained ones that Marcus seemed to have on his payroll. What they needed was someone less conspicuous, someone whose presence would be ignored in a house like that. Someone like one of the maids.

With Dean's life hanging in the balance, Sam wouldn't dare voice a single objection, even if his mind had screamed more than a few.

They parked the car in the same spot that they'd been using to keep an eye on the place, away from the gate entrance security cameras and hidden from any coming or going traffic, and waited for one of the housemaids to make an appearance, hoping that at least one of them wouldn't live inside Marcus' house permanently.

Luck struck a little after eleven pm. The electric gate whirled open and a blue Ford exited quietly through the opening. Seated behind the wheel, Sam and Bobby could see a young woman with black hair. She hadn't even bothered to take off her uniform, probably eager to get home.

Sam exchanged a look with Bobby. After this, there would be no turning back. Not after kidnapping one of Marcus' employees. Silently, he started the car.

The young woman stopped at a Chinese restaurant after a couple of minutes drive. Late dinner, Sam supposed.

Nodding in Bobby's direction, Sam slipped out of the car and followed the woman inside while Bobby slid into the driver's seat. This could be their only chance to get the woman alone before she got home to who knows how many people. All Sam had to do was get a table near hers and grab a glass, a fork, anything that she had used. This could turn out to be easier than he had thought.

His hopes sank to the bottom when he got inside and saw the woman hugging an older man behind the counter and kissing him on the cheek.

She wasn't there to grab dinner on her way home, Sam realized. She _was_ home.

Quickly adjusting to the situation's shift, Sam realized that this didn't changed much. All he needed was to get his hands on something the young woman had touched. After the spell was done, he could just walk her body out and her family wouldn't even know she was gone.

Taking a deep breath, Sam moved to the counter and ordered a box of fried rice and chicken to take away. The young woman, sitting behind the counter, looking through a stack of receipts, didn't even look up at him as the older man took Sam's order and disappeared into the kitchen.

Standing casually, Sam leaned against the counter and hoped he looked calmer than he felt inside. Scanning the table, his eyes darted around furiously, eagerly searching for something that he could use, but it was no use. Except for the pen she that she absentmindedly nibbled away on, there was nothing.

Clearing his throat to grab the woman's attention, Sam offered her his best smile. "I see you deliver?" he asked lamely. God! He felt like he was fifteen all over again, trying to ask a girl out for the first time.

If he stopped for a second to think a little deeper about the situation, it was, in an odd way, a first time for him.

First time he'd kidnapped an innocent person. At least that Sam remembered. There was no way of knowing what soulless him had been up to. He hoped he hadn't gone around kidnapping innocent people...

Large brown eyes focused on his face and she offered a smile back. "We do. Fifteen minutes guaranteed so long as the delivery address is inside the city limits."

Sam looked around, casually. "Do you have a card? Or a pen and paper so I can write down the number? My wife and I just moved in and neither of us really likes to cook all that much," he added with a nervous smile, going for harmless rather than flirty.

When the young woman handed him a red card with golden letters, Sam almost jumped with satisfaction. That was it! That was all he would need to change bodies with this tiny woman.

Holding in his hands the chance to make his crazy plan work, reality slammed into Sam for the first time. Up until that point, his focus had been on Dean; finding out where he was, making sure that his brother was okay, getting him back to his family. This woman, however, had nothing to do with any of that. She was just a random person who happened to work for a very sleazy man.

Sam looked at her – really looked at her.

Soon, he would be her – this petite girl, maybe shy of five feet, with her heart-shaped face and delicate mouth – for the next twenty-four hours. Altogether, entirely too _fragile_ for Sam's plans.

Too innocent.

She was, however, the only one that they could use on such short notice.

Sam felt bad for what he was going to put her through, even though, if all went according to plan, she would sleep for most of it.

Before he could change his mind and risk his only shot at finding Dean, Sam grabbed the card she offered, their fingers brushing in an innocent way. The piece of paper burned hot inside his pocket as Sam left the diner.

"You could've at least brought enough for two," Bobby complained as Sam got inside the car.

Sam looked at the bag he was carrying, not quite understanding what Bobby was saying until he remembered that he was carrying food. The smell of the Kung Pao chicken made him suddenly nauseous.

"Be my guest," Sam said, thrusting the bag in Bobby hands.

"Did you get it?" the older man asked, setting the food on the floor. He wasn't all that hungry either.

Sam nodded.

 **≪◇≫**

School corridors looked the same everywhere, as far as Dean could remember. And he could remember quite a lot of different ones, always changing school as he and Sam had done throughout their childhood. The corridors in the school where he taught were no different.

Dean was used to those yellow walls, lined with blue lockers. Students greeted him as he passed by, even if they weren't _his_ students. There weren't that many teachers in there that needed a wheelchair to move around. Everyone knew who he was, if only because of that.

The lights flickered once before shutting down one, by one, in rapid succession. Dean pulled the brakes on his chair, waiting. Instead of the red glow of the emergency lights, Dean found himself bathed in a blue neon light. The blue lockers lining the school hall faded away and were replaced by a dark alley, the back alley of some trashy bar, smelling of piss and rotten food.

Dean could feel his back being pressed up against a green dumpster, wet plastic soaking his coat, food leftovers clinging to his hair where his head touched the dirty surface.

There was a guy looming over him, holding him up, uncomfortably and dangerously close. A big guy with wild, curly hair that made his head look like a big balloon. His breath smelled of stale blood.

Dean's back hurt, his face hurt. He had no strength left in his legs. If the big guy released him in that very second, Dean knew he would just fall down.

The guy smiled at him and Dean felt his skin crawl. And then he was tasting blood and ash in his lips and the world started to spin around him.

At a distance, lit by the street lamps, an impossibly tall, silhouetted figure stood; Dean could just make him out. Then the shadows drew back and the tall figure was staring at them. Smiling. Enjoying the show.

Dean grabbed the sidebars on his wheelchair and resisted the urge to scream.

"Are you okay, Mr. Winchester?"

Dean nodded, not looking up. His face felt flushed and covered in sweat; he didn't want to scare the student or give her anymore reason to call someone. It was weird enough that Dean couldn't seem to be able to keep a grasp on the world around himself; he did not wanted others raising questions about his sanity.

The world was still spinning, but fortunately the young girl seemed to have taken his word for it and left. Dean took a deep breath and rolled to his eleven o'clock class.

 **≪◇≫**

The man on the sterile table fascinated Marcus more than the surroundings. A true marvel of the human species, linked to the archangel Michael. A mystery that he couldn't wait to crack.

Harmless looking while unconscious, but deadly and dangerous when awake. Or so Marcus was slowly learning.

Dean Winchester.

The name had constantly come up in nearly every conversation between Marcus and his team of hunters. It had popped up when the Wyoming Devil's gate had been bandied about; some obscure rumors that Dean and his brother had been responsible for opening it. The name was there again when demonic deals were mentioned; however, rumors of Dean having struck one himself were neither confirmed nor denied.

Most importantly, his name appeared frequently, more than any other hunter's, when they turned their attentions to angels. There were whispers and murmurings, too many to be ignored, about a mysterious man often seen with Dean, someone who no one knew and whose actions had raised more than one suspicious eyebrow.

Rumors that word had been spread amongst the fringiest religious groups to be on the lookout for Dean had only added to the confusion.

Search as though they had, there was little hard evidence and fewer facts that the team could present to Marcus, but the consistency of the rumors had caught his attention nonetheless. And in the hunting world, rumor alone was often as much as any of them had to go on.

What few registered facts and official documentation they'd found had proved to be even more confusing. Dean Winchester, son of Mary and John Winchester and brother of Sam Winchester, had apparently died in 2005, in St. Louis. And again in 2008, in a bombed police station. Also, a couple of hunters had bragged that they had killed Dean over a year ago, in a motel room, not that anyone could find them now to confirm that story one way or the other.

Either people kept dreaming of killing this man, or he kept coming back to life. After so many failed attempts to achieve his goals behind him, Marcus had pinned his hopes on it being the latter.

Whichever it was, Dean Winchester seemed to be the man with all the answers to the questions Marcus needed answered.

  
 **≪◇≫**  
On good days, Dean would see Lisa everywhere. She was there in every dark haired woman he saw, she was there every time the wind caressed his skin as tenderly as a lover's touch.

On not so good days, Sam was there too.

Dean could close his eyes and see Sam inside the panic room. But instead of remembering his brother in the throes of demon-blood addiction, Dean would picture his brother, helplessly trapped on that tiny cot, with a thin, wiry, old man, hovering over him.

Sometimes, the old man looked like Death; sometimes he was Dean himself.

After meeting Jacob and knowing of his plans for Ben, Dean saw shadows everywhere. Lurking, waiting to catch him unaware.

Twice more he saw the black car that had nearly run him over twice more; the roar of its engine sounded like a lion, waiting to pounce on top of Dean the minute he let his guard down.

 **≪◇≫**

Not many people could say that they went to sleep a six foot four Caucasian guy and woke up a four feet nine Asian woman.

For some reason, the sight of the tiny feet upon which he stood, freaked Sam a lot more than the fact that he no longer had a dick. Inside his head, Sam was picturing himself walking on the flimsiest of stilts, like an artist at the circus, and falling miserably to the ground as soon as he tried to stand.

None of that happened. But only when Sam looked into the mirror and saw hi- _her_ reflection did his brain shift from 'big guy' to 'petite woman'.

It was worse than his 'experience' with Gary. Apart from the absence of confusion of not knowing what was going on, at least with the teen Sam had some things in common. Few, but they were at least anatomically present.

Now, all that Sam could see in the mirror was a completely alien landscape for him. And god, Dean could never, _ever_ find out about this, because crap, if he ever did, there'd be no end to the jokes at Sam's expense.

Thinking of his missing brother sobered Sam faster than a bucket of ice.

Setting aside his freak out, Sam quickly got dressed (silently apologizing to the rightful owner of the body for the violation of her privacy) and went out. Bobby was already waiting for him by the curb, sitting patiently in his truck.

"Looking good, pretty lady," Bobby teased as soon as Sam opened the car door.

"God!" Sam moaned, nearly jumping at the too high-pitched sound that came out of his mouth. He resisted the urge to cover his mouth, looking around, half expecting people passing by in the street to be staring at him. Ignoring Bobby's chuckle, he leaned down and glared at him. "You're worse than Dean."

"Get in and stop whining," Bobby said, starting the car. "It was your idea in the first place."

Sam did as he was told and sagged into the seat, quickly reversing the action when he realized that he couldn't see the road in that position. "She okay?"

Bobby nodded. "Back in the motel room, sleeping like a baby inside your gigantor bones," the other man confirmed. "Gave her –you, I mean- enough sedative for at least six hours. Should give us time for you to give that house a good look-see, make the switch back and leave her back in her car. If all goes well, she'll just think that she fell asleep on the drive home yesterday."

Sam nodded. At least that poor woman wouldn't have to wake up and find herself in a strange body and be frightened to death; she'd probably end up in therapy for the rest of her life. Or have herself committed. Neither was a particularly comforting thought.

A long, silky tendril of hair chose that moment to drift in front of Sam's face and he batted at it with a growl of annoyance. It wasn't the first time that had happened and it wouldn't be the last and it was starting to get on his nerves. First order of business if he wanted to save Dean was to find a damn elastic band to get that hair under control. Sam could hear his brother laughing inside his head and he couldn't help but chuckle at the irony too. Sam Winchester... complaining about too long hair.

"You sure you're up to do this?" Bobby asked for the eleventh time.

Sam gave him no answer. It wasn't like they had a whole lot of options at this point.

 **≪◇≫**

Dean had learned to pick his favorite places according to number of ramps and open spaces they had. He hated the video store because the space between movie shelves was too narrow for him to navigate with his wheelchair and he always had to twist around sideways to read the titles on the plastic covers; he loved the bakery at the end of the street because they had a nice, gently angled ramp that didn't strain his arms when he went there to buy bread and those lemon cakes that Ben loved. And the chocolate pie they made... lord, ramp or no ramp, Dean would _still_ go there.

The park two streets down from where they lived was another of Dean's favorites. The walking paths were mostly flat, with no jogging track anywhere in the vicinity. Dean had hated running just for the sake of running, not when his job required him to run after or from things that ran a hell of lot faster than he ever could. But that was before. Now he just hated seeing people run.

The trees were tall, old and sturdy and home to more squirrels than Dean dared to guess. The grass was green almost all year long, like some kind of magic spell had been placed on the grounds and the lake, that took most of the left side of the park, wasn't deep enough to have any decent fish in it, but the wild ducks liked it enough to use it has kindergarten.

Whenever Dean's classes ended early in the afternoon and he had no other commitment to attend to, he would grab a bag of peanuts for the squirrels and head for the park.

That day, however, Dean had another reason for visiting.

Maybe it was intuition, maybe it was plain obsession, maybe it was just him losing his mind. But Dean could swear that, the minute he had left the school grounds, that black car from before was following him.

Wheelchair parked at the edge of the lake, he wore his shades even though there were heavy clouds in the sky that hid the sun from sight. From there, Dean had a good view of the whole park, including the two entries and the road that circled the park.

Ten minutes in, Dean was ready to laugh at his apparent neuroses. In a rare bout of self-consciousness, he wondered what Lisa would say if she saw him like that, chasing imaginary ghosts; what Sam would say, knowing that once upon a time, they had chased real ghosts.

Twenty minutes in, Dean was beginning to feel stupid, like the kid who decides to face the school's bully but waits for him at the wrong school exit and completely misses his opportunity. The light rain that had started to fall, chasing everyone else from their walks in the park only made Dean feel more stupid when he remained behind.

And then Dean saw it. The black car of before. The one whose license place read like Dean's tombstone.

Engine rumbling, shaking the ground, it drove by, slowly. Then slower. Until it stopped.

Barely breathing, Dean watched as the driver side door opened and someone got out.

There was nothing specific about the driver, other than being a very tall man. He was dressed all in black, almost disappearing from view when he passed in front of his equally dark car.

The man stopped on the limit of the grass carpet that surrounded the lake, like it was a salt line meant to deter evil things instead of plants, and looked across.

Caught in the open, it wasn't even trying to hide anymore. He was staring straight at Dean.

Sweat rolled down Dean's back. Or maybe it was rain. Dean didn't care which. Stuck in this macabre Mexican standoff, Dean knew that while the distance between them was too great to allow clear visual of the other man's face, they were close enough that if he ever wanted to confront his stalker, now was the time.

The stranger didn't give Dean much time to wonder. He reached inside his bulky jacket and pulled something long, thin and made of a material that ate light as soon as it dared to touch it. It took Dean a couple of seconds to realize that he was staring down at the end barrel of a sniper riffle.

At that distance, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Dean swallowed, rooted to the spot, wishing for the first time in the past few years that he was carrying a gun. There was no point in running away, rolling around aimlessly like a headless chicken. His chair would never outrun a bullet.

The overcast sky cleared for an instant and sunlight came bursting forth in well defined rays through the clouds. As one touched the menacing figure, ready to fire its weapon, the man vanished, like he had never been there.

He looked around. There was no one in the vicinity, no one to panic at a crazy gunman, no one to point fingers at the obvious threat. No one to tell Dean if he had imagined it all or if it'd been real.

 **≪◇≫**

Marcus opened the door to the room situated on the top floor of the western tower of his mansion in Pennsylvania. It was late at night and other than himself, only the doctor and nurse on call were still awake. The medical staff under his pay roll held a constant vigil, keeping a close eye on the readings of the several monitors surrounding Dean and over the man himself.

Not long after they'd captured and subdued the hunter, Marcus had taken to visiting the holding area where Dean was kept, even when there was no session scheduled. He would get ready to go to bed, rest his head over his goose-feathers pillow, close his eyes and know that he would not be able to sleep until he had made his nightly visit.

The room was too hot, Marcus realized as soon as he entered, the medical personal probably taking into account the state of undress of the man on the table rather than the rest of them.

Marcus neared the air conditioner control and made some adjustments. In a matter of minutes, the units kicked on, plunging the room into a more pleasant temperature.

"Anything we can do for you, sir?" the doctor, Rudolph, asked, just as he always did. "Do you wish to connect again?"

Marcus considered the offer for a couple of seconds. There was no sane reason to want to be inside Dean's head, to visit his thoughts and emotions, to manipulate his feelings, but still Marcus always found himself unable to sleep just thinking about it.

If he were to be completely honest with himself, he would say yes. He didn't know what it was about this man's experiences, his life, but Marcus wanted to delve into those feelings again, to push and probe and illicit new responses, even knowing that the one crucial piece of information he needed from Dean could not be obtain in a rush and careless way. Certainly not like this, on a whim, in the middle of the night.

They had already gathered all the intel that they needed on angels, and now that Marcus' team had begun the search for a way to harness the power of an angel, Dean's knowledge and usefulness had almost run its course.

There was still the small matter of DNA compatibility between vessel and angel, but that was something that Marcus was sure that his genetics' team would find a solution for... or they would find themselves replaced by someone who could.

No, in all honesty there was only one more thing of relevance that Marcus needed from Dean, a final piece in his plan. And yet...

"No, Dr. Rudolph," Marcus answered the physician. "Let him rest for now. We'll proceed with tomorrow's session, as scheduled."

And yet, the still form that lay in that bed, fed by tubes and devoid of all life except for the rise and fall of his chest, held no resemblance to the man that Marcus interacted with in dreamland. It looked like a bad replica, a rubber life-sized doll of the real thing.

It was hard to look at that unconscious Dean and see him as a real person.

What would the good doctor say of the addictive effects that dream-walking was having on Marcus? Was it something inherent to the herbs used in the tea, or a peculiar effect from walking this particular man's memories and dreams?

Perhaps it was simply the god-like feeling that Marcus got when he was hooked to the same machine as the legendary Dean Winchester and knowing he was in control of that man's life. Perhaps it was fate.

Like someone from Dean's real life walking in on the meeting that Marcus had put together to get his hands on one of the Holy Nails.

Always a curious of ancient history, Marcus had known about the lore surrounding the Holy Nails for quite sometime, even before his quest had begun. However, dismissing it as superstitious fantasies fueled by less educated minds, easily impressed by shiny things, Marcus had not paid the legends their proper relevance. That had all changed when he had found how many myths and legends were actually true.

If it had been just a matter of purchasing one, Marcus would have no problems. The right amount of money in the right pair of hands would get him the artifact in less than a day, no matter where in the world.

The problem was that no one knew where in the world to find them. As far as anyone could tell, other than the fakes put on display for tourists and the devout, the real thing no longer existed.

Marcus remembered Bobby from Dean's memories. There was no blood relation between the two of them, but there might as well have been; Winchester looked up to the older hunter, thought of him like a father. Regardless of all those sappy feelings that Marcus didn't give a crap about, Bobby and his incredible research skills could prove to be an invaluable resource.

If the artifact that Marcus needed to ensure the success of his plan existed and could be found, Bobby would be the one to do it. Like Dean, the old hunter had become an integral part of Marcus plan, only in quite a different way. Fate had brought that man to the steps of his house.

Sam's presence so nearby, however, concerned Marcus a little bit more. He knew too little about Dean's younger brother and the rumors spread about him were even wilder than the ones he'd heard about Dean.

The gentle giant who had been riven from the prospect of a successful life as a lawyer by the murder of his girlfriend. The vessel of the devil himself. The sensitive side of the Winchester duo. A cold and heartless hunter who stopped at nothing to get what he wanted, so much so that not even other hunters dared to cross him.

Information about Sam Winchester was like a fast and schizophrenic tennis match, ball jumping from one end of the court to the other at dizzying speed.

Not to mention the fact that, like his brother Dean, half the hunters Marcus had talked to swore that Sam was dead.

However, even if at the time Marcus had known that Sam was in fact alive, he was certain that he would have still picked Dean as his mean's to an end. Opportunity, after all, had played its part as well.

And now that he had Dean in his hands, Marcus knew he had made the right choice, that he had picked the right brother.

Dean's heart had been the key to his most hidden memories. How would Marcus have been able to manipulate a hunter without heart?

 **≪◇≫**

Dean dreamt of being awake. It was the most unsettling of feelings, opening his eyes and finding himself not in the bedroom that he used to share with Lisa, but rather in a room painted white with bright lights that made the whole ceiling disappear in a sea of luminosity.

It made Dean feel like he was floating on the surface of the sun. Except that, instead of burning, he felt nothing but cold. He was always cold.

There were shadows inside the light.

For some reason that escaped understanding, Dean always pictured them as demons. Demons in Hell liked to hide in the light as well.

Or maybe they were fairies. He had no idea why, but Dean was sure that fairies were just as evil and bloodthirsty as demons and that both wanted a piece of who he was. Both wanted to change him into something else

"No, Dr. Rudolph," the disembodied voice of one of the demons said. "Let him rest for now. We'll proceed wi..."

After that, the bright light was engulfed by darkness. But the cold remained.

"You dosed off," Ben's voice called Dean back to awareness.

Dean shivered and looked around, confused for a moment to find himself surrounded by old books that were piled everywhere, covering each surface like a heavy coat. Bobby's place.

Well, it was Dean's place now, but in his mind, it would always be Bobby's place. Dean hadn't bothered to change a thing. Even the dust layers were still the same. If he closed his eyes, Dean could still see Sam sitting on the old couch and Bobby sitting at his desk, pouring over old texts in obscure languages that no one spoke these days.

He and Ben had spent the day painting sigils all over the house. Enochian sigils, for the most part. Ben seemed fascinated by what they were for and what they could do, soaking up every brush stroke by Dean's hand, every spoken word from his lips. Somehow, he didn't seem to care that the reason why Dean was angel-proofing the house and grounds was because there was an angel after Ben.

"We could clear the shack," Ben went on, probably in the same line of thought that Dean had fallen asleep to. "Use it as a class room."

Dean's brow creased.

"It's falling apart," he countered. There was no point in trying to weasel out of the school thing anymore. Ben was like a bloodhound in his pursuit, more now than before. With the angels breathing down their necks and the threat of Heaven's war being fought on the streets of Earth, Dean couldn't really blame the kid.

Kid.

Young man, Dean corrected himself quietly. He really needed to start seeing Ben as a young adult rather than a kid; it had taken far too long for Dean to recognize that in Sam and he wouldn't make the same mistake with Ben. So Dean vowed silently to change that, preferably in time to get used to the idea, at least by the time Ben turned eighteen, which was just a couple of months away.

"They're arriving in a couple of hours," Ben said. "No one really cares how the place looks, just about what they'll learn."

There it was again, that glint in Ben's eyes that scared the crap out of Dean. Was this how he had looked at his father when John had started teaching him about hunting? Had he been this gung-ho to risk his own life?

The matter of Jacob's proposal had been dropped after they had settled in Bobby's place and plans for the hunters' school had begun. Dean was just happy for the distraction, feeble as it was.

The days they had spent waiting for Ben's classes to end and for Dean's commitments to be done with had been tense, to say the least. Dean had tried his best to lead life as usual. As usual as things ever got for him.

But nothing was the same.

If life before had been a struggle, what with raising a kid on his own and dealing with his disability, now, knowing that there was an angel chasing Ben and that there was nothing that Dean could do to protect his son, his definition of 'struggle' had suffered some major remodeling. Knowledge of the sword dangling over them both was eating away at him, stealing Dean' sleep every night.

For his part, Ben had solemnly directed his efforts to keeping in touch with the three hunters that would be joining them and organizing things with the students that would make up for their first class. There were twenty already, that Dean knew of.

With the increase in the number of reports of strange happenings around the world; bright lights at night that left entire fields devastated without signs of any outside influence. Entire buildings evaporated from when they stood, with no trace of their destruction. Lightning storms that hit particular places with such an intensity and precision that they seemed to be anything but random. People disappearing every day, leaving everything behind, never to be seen again... it was no wonder that everyone wanted to know how to protect themselves and their loved ones.

It seemed only reasonable that anyone not in denial about the coming battle would want to do something; it seemed a far better option than just standing by and waiting for what came next.

Twenty, as it was, was a small enough number. Mainly because information about the whole project had been kept almost secretively, passed around from mouth to mouth only to trusted ears.

What came next, however, scared Dean more than the building up of reports of angel skirmishes and fights.

Jacob's silence and Ben's non-pursuit of the matter left Dean uneasy. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And drop it did, two days after the first hunting class was taught.

 **≪◇≫**

'His' name was Brenda Wong, Sam found out from the driver's license in her purse.

Sam nodded to the guard at the gate, hoping that he and Brenda weren't best buddies or had some close relationship that would make his casual greeting look odd and raise any alarms. The man nodded back and Sam sighed in relief.

"Hey, Brenda?" the guard called back before Sam could take more than two steps.

Sam stopped, planting a laid-back look on his face. He couldn't be discovered this soon, even before setting foot inside the house. The door was just right there, all he had to do was reach out and touch...

"Thought it was your day off?" the guard went on, his steps coming closer to Sam.

Sam tensed, wondering if the man suspected anything even though he knew that it was virtually impossible for him, or anyone else, for that matter, to even fathom the possibility that the person in front of him was anyone but Brenda.

"Forgot my wallet last night," Sam let out with a practiced eye-roll, tilting his head in what he hoped was a female enough position. Playing the right amount of coy was tougher than walking in high heels, Sam would suppose (something he hadn't, fortunately, been forced to put to a test as he'd searched Brenda's closet for some no-nonsense tennis shoes to wear and been quite successful at his quest).

The guard chuckled, just like Sam had hoped he would.

"Yeah, I guess these days you can't wait to get out of the house right?" he said with a knowing wink.

Sam had no idea what he was talking about, but he figured Brenda would've. He chuckled back and lowered his gaze, pretending to be embarrassed at being caught. "I really _was_ in a hurry."

"Well, I gotta get back to my post," the guard said. "Give Sue a kiss from me, will ya?"

Sam nodded, despite not having heard a word the man had said, and made a hasty retreat towards the house.

From the house schematics that he'd snatched from the City Hall online files, Sam knew that there was a service entrance in the back with direct access to all floors.

Sam's aim was to search first this house and, if he failed to find Dean there, he would try to sneak inside Marcus' office and see if he could get more information.

Calling it a big house was a bit of an understatement. There was an east wing and a west wing, the latter having a turret, a tower-like structure that dated, or at least denoting the architectural influences that had gone into designing the massive residence. All in all, with its many old English period exterior accents, complete with a circular, gray roof, the estate looked more like a castle and less like a home. The kind of place one bought as a status symbol rather than a place to live comfortably.

Three stories high with one attic tall enough to house another floor, each floor ran the length of two football fields. And that was not taking into account the stables, which had been converted into a garage that could house up to twenty cars; the gardening shed, which was big enough to house a family of five; the inside pool; the outside pool house and the guards' quarters.

Sam took a deep breath, thinking about the likelihood of Dean being anywhere as exposed as a pool house or a garage and thanked the powers-that-be for small favors, as it was. There was no basement.

If Sam had to search for his brother through another series of damp, dark and rotten underground rooms, he was going to punch Fate in the nose.

Even so, it would be a daunting task.

There was a back door, of sorts, and Sam pushed it open cautiously. It led to more doors; the one to the right would take him to the kitchen, if the smell of freshly baked bread was anything to go by; the one on the left to the stairs. Turning to take the door on the left, Sam paused when he saw the lockers in one corner, behind some boxes of canned food. There was one with Brenda's name on it.

Opening it, Sam found two other complete uniforms, similar to the one she had worn home the previous night.

Thinking that his presence would be a lot less conspicuous if Brenda was wearing her working clothes, Sam quickly slipped into one of the yellow uniforms.

"What are you doing here?" a woman's voice caught Sam by surprise just as he was struggling with the skirt's zipper.

Looking up, he saw a short, round woman, probably old enough to be his mother. The nametag on the plaque on her chest read 'Megan'.

"I..." Sam stuttered, thinking about a believable reason to be there on what was, apparently, Brenda's day off. Remembering the guard's words, Sam quickly put a bored expression on his face. "Sue called... she needed to do some stuff this morning and asked if I could cover for her."

Megan rose on fine plucked eyebrow, staring at 'Brenda' from top to bottom. "Turn around," she ordered in a voice that allowed for no argument.

Not really sure what to do, Sam did as he was told, his hands awkwardly grasping the edges of the skirt so it wouldn't fall off. Tensing when he sensed Megan drawing closer to his back, Sam relaxed when he heard a zipper running.

"These young girls today," the woman went on. "Can't even zip a damn skirt. And don't you think that Sue ain't gonna get a earful either, thinking that she can sneak out of work without anyone noticing..." she went on. "And as for you, you can get going on the window washing. That was Sue's work for today, so you might as well start it."

Sam didn't even dare opening his mouth until the matron lady went away, still mumbling about the lack of commitment of youth. He just grabbed a box with a bottle of window cleaner and a cloth and opened the door on the left. The stairs were the only way to go from there.

The first floor seemed to be mostly sleeping quarters. Room after room after room, until Sam felt like he was trapped inside some loop or a frigging furniture store. He and Dean had stayed in motels with less rooms that this frigging house.

By the end of the corridor, on the left, a set of double doors gave access to a lounge room whose walls were covered in books. Some of them looked genuinely old enough to grab Sam's attention on any other occasion. He barely gave them a glimpse before closing the doors again.

The last door on that floor was locked, which only piqued Sam's interest.

Heart pounding against his chest, wondering if Dean could be behind those doors, Sam pulled the pick from his pocket, gave one last look around to make sure he was alone and went to work on the lock. House locks, in general, were far from a challenge to break in. This one was no different.

Closing the door behind himself, Sam searched the wall for the light switch and flicked it on.

And gasped.

Dean wasn't there; it didn't look like he'd ever been there. The whole space, however, looked like John Winchester had camped inside for a year. If John Winchester had a fetish for angels.

 **≪◇≫**

In a matter of mere months, Marcus learned a lot about the myths and legends of the world. Few, however, seemed to fit the parameters that he'd set for his goal.

Vampires were an easy choice, one of the first to come up. The simplest of processes and one that made the most sense; all Marcus had to do was allow himself to be turned and he would be forever young, one of the children of the night. But he would also be dependent on others, hostage of a blood lust that according to what they had found, no vampire could control. Marcus had no desire to spend his eternity as an addict.

Philosopher stones and the fountain of youth had both been complete busts, childish bedtime stories that had amounted to nothing tangible.

Shapeshifters and skinwalkers seemed to be genetic conditions that would be hard to mimic and were put aside for the moment. Besides, the rough drawings and stories detailing the grotesque details of their physical mutations would not only mean Marcus had to set aside his personal vanity, but he'd have to live forever the life of a recluse. Simply put, a thing of that repugnance would create a public stir wherever it went and for Marcus, for all his wealth and bravado, knew that simply wouldn't do.

Gouls, ghosts, wendigos, and all sort of deformed or not even truly living beings, for much of the same reason, were not even considered.

Marcus wanted to be more than human, but he wanted to live as himself, in control of his actions and fate.

Demons came into the conversation almost by accident. Making a crossroads' deal with one of them was hardly productive, not when the price would be paid in a ten years time unless Marcus found someone to pay the price for him. But even so, there were no guarantees that either the demon or the sucker he found would keep their word.

Marcus had been the one to suggest demonic possession. It seemed like a good fit: a powerful being without any corporal form unless it took the body of a human, giving him superhuman strength, the power to read minds and move objects without touching them, amongst other things. It was too good to pass up and Marcus loved the idea, but only if he was the one in charge.

Despite being warned that it would be next to impossible to control a demon, let alone trust one, Marcus decided to go forward the idea.

They summoned one.

Marcus' team was sure that they had found a way to trap the demon inside a protective circle, and that, once trapped, they could reason with it and present their deal.

The young man in coveralls that showed up when they finished the summoning ritual looked nothing like a demon.

Until they looked into his eyes and saw his black-as-night true nature.

Cautious of what he was doing, Marcus had sent one of his security guards to be possessed while and he watched a video feed, from a safe distance. If this demon could keep his word, Marcus would then make the switch and finally live forever.

It was a disaster. The first thing that the possessed man did once he was free from the trapping circle was to kill everyone in that room. And when there was no one else to kill, it had simply vanished in to thin air, never to be seen again.

They tried it two more times after that, the next time with a couple of homeless people that Marcus' guards had grabbed from the streets. The same thing happened every time. It was clear that demons could neither be tamed nor trusted.

When all reasonable avenues inside the unreasonable world of the supernatural had been pursued and spent, Marcus was once again the one who came up with a final suggestion, the one creature that they hadn't tried yet because none of the hunters believed it to be real.

Angels.

 **≪◇≫**

Covering two of the walls were newspaper prints, photos, maps with red X marks, handwritten papers... all the pieces and bits of a thorough research. The third wall was filled with more books, looking older and more fragile than the ones kept in the library; one of the selves was filled with scrolls and Sam could only imagine how many rare tomes were concealed in that secret room.

The angels were... everywhere.

There were several statues depicting every angelic known form, from cherubs to fighting angels; a large painting on the wall showed Michael, piercing the side of a dragon. The books on the shelves were about the same subject, going from historical, to religious to the fringier personal tales of angel encounters.

At first look, it seemed that any and everything pertaining to angels and their actions and contacts with humans throughout time had been collected and put on display in that room in one form or another.

One photo in particular, pinned next to the U.S. map on the wall, caught Sam's attention. He walked steadily across the room, closer with every step, and with every step feeling his dread mount. It was a grainy black and white shot of two men, walking side by side on some street that Sam couldn't place.

The men, however, were easy enough to identify. Sam would recognize his own brother anywhere and under any circumstances; and the trench coat that the other man was wearing made his identification just as simple. Dean and Castiel.

There were more pictures of Dean surrounding that one, some linked to X's on the map, and some linked to newspaper clippings. A vengeful spirit that they had put to rest two states over six weeks before; the dragons' attacks on virgins that he had Dean had tried to stop less than a month ago. They were all there, a factual and detailed trail of their moves across the country.

The last one clipping, Sam recognized immediately. He ripped it off the wall and stared at it, fingers shaking with a mixture of outrage and sadness.

It had been taken from too far a distance to give much detail to the look of utter devastation that Dean's face had been showing at that time, but Sam didn't need to see it, he'd lived it. The setting, the location and the timing, however... Sam knew too well when this had been taken.

In the photo, Dean was coming down the front steps of the hospital, the same hospital where he'd left behind what had probably been his last chance at normal, his shot at being happy and having a family of his own. The same hospital where he'd left Lisa and Ben behind and disappeared from their lives like one of the ghosts they hunted. Sam remembered all too well the unshed tears in his brother's eyes and the sheer despair in which he had demanded that Sam never mention Lisa and Ben ever again.

Sam resisted the urge to tear that room apart. This guy had been following Dean for some time it seemed, just waiting for the right opportunity to grab him. And the chance had presented itself when Dean's heart had been broken.

Taking a deep breath, Sam looked at the printed papers instead, looking for some logic in these people's actions.

He knew from what Bobby had told him that Marcus was trying to get his hands on a Holy Nail. But to what purpose? And how did that connect with angels?

Then it struck Sam, like a bolt of lightning. The lore surrounding the Holy Nails spoke not only about the power of winning wars and controlling armies; it spoke of controlling Heaven's armies, Heavenly creatures. "Shit…" Sam murmured as the full ramifications sunk in.

This guy was trying to harness an angel!

Sam shook his head. Even with the authentic Nails, even if the lore about them was accurate, it would still be like trying to put a leash on a hurricane. Why would anyone want to do that?

What did this guy want with an angel? Have it as a personal pet?

Marcus obviously had a serious hard-on for angels, that much Sam could easily see from all the stuff gathered in that room. But to what end? And where did Dean fit into all of that?

Frustrated that he wouldn't find Dean's whereabouts in that room, which was honestly giving him the creeps, Sam flicked the lights off and opened the door. Making sure that the corridor was still empty, he left, closing the door behind him.

He had one floor left to search. The access to it, though, was guarded.

"You can't come in here, little miss," the tall guard standing at the top of the stairs said. He looked down at Sam with a condescending smile and Sam was finding it increasingly hard to tolerate the way these Neanderthals stared down at hi—her. Without realizing it, he felt his hands curl into fists before he was able to reel in his anger and take a breath.

Craning his neck to have a look at the towering man (who, to Sam's frustration was shorter than Dean), Sam vowed never to make fun of short people ever again in his life. It was damn uncomfortable.

"But I was told to clean _all_ the windows," Sam tried, blinking Brenda's eyelashes for good measure. God, he hated using the poor woman like that.

The guard gave him a sleazy smile, leaning closer, taking the invitation that Sam wasn't even aware he was making. "All windows _but_ these ones, you know that, sweet heart."

"Why not?" Sam pushed on, hoping that the question would come off more as flirting rather than as pressing for information. "You boys have some sort of a secret club up there?"

The guard chuckled. "Secret freak show, more like it," he whispered.

"Fred! Quit fucking around and come help us here!" someone yelled, snapping 'Fred' back to attention.

"Go back downstairs," Fred ordered before turning his back and racing back to the other guard who was waiting for him outside one of the rooms at the far end of the corridor. "Now!"

Sam pretended to turn around and head back. As soon as Fred was out of sight, however, he ran up the final steps and darted behind a large vase that decorated the second floor's hall. For the first time, Sam found himself grateful for Brenda's smaller body.

Some sort of alarm went off and for a fragment of a second, Sam thought that he had been discovered. Dozens of feet were racing up the stairs and Sam's tiny fists curled once more, nails biting into his palms, ready to fight his way into that room if need be. The guards rushing up from the first floor didn't even look his way.

Whatever was happening in that room, it was getting out of control and that was where they all headed.

Sam could hear crashing metal and loud cursing. One scream in particular made Sam's blood freeze in his veins.

Sam knew that scream. He'd heard it before.

Despite his best efforts to hide the effects that Hell's memories had over him, there were nights when Dean was helpless against the nightmares that haunted his sleep. When the alcohol wasn't enough to mask the fear, when sleep could no longer be denied, Dean would often wake up screaming.

Blood chilling sounds just like the one Sam heard coming from that room.

One man wearing a white lab coat came rushing out the closed door, not stopping until he was at the end of the hall. And for one, wild reckless moment, or a second, Sam entertained the idea of rushing into that room and letting his eyes confirm what his ears were telling him.

Dean was there.

 **≪◇≫**

Most of the cars that Bobby had collect through his years as a salvage yard owner, were still there. Columns of rust and leaky tubes that extended as far as the eye could see.

The yard looked bigger from his wheelchair. More intimidating, like he could lose himself in that labyrinth of metal and never be found again.

It was the first time Dean had looked around the place since Bobby's death, the first time he had done it after losing the use of his legs. The piled cars seemed to stretch all the way to the sky from that point of view.

Dean caught some movement at the corner of his eye and whirled his chair around. It was just him and Ben there, for now. Everyone else was scheduled to start arriving soon.

The shadows cast by the rusty cars shifted slightly and Dean moved forward. "Who's there?" he called out. "Ben, is that you?"

The lack of answer was enough to get Dean's heart beating wildly. He was unarmed, alone in the salvage yard. And what was worse, Ben was alone at the house.

Dean remembered the shadowy figure at the park, how it had pulled a gun on him. Looking around, Dean spotted an iron pipe, part of some car's exhaust system, wedged underneath a broken front shield.

Keeping one eye on the moving shadow, Dean made his way to the only weapon that he had at reach. He bent down, sideways, fingers reaching for the dirt floor.

The shadow took form in front of him, too close for comfort, too near to give Dean much time to defend himself.

With a curse, Dean stretched harder, fingers brushing the edge of the pipe.

The thing advanced towards him, slowly, like it had all the time in the world to kill him. With each step it took, its form changed ever so slightly. The image warped and altered like a TV linked to an old antenna, tuning a difficult channel.

When his fingers finally curled around the pipe and he looked up, Dean almost lost the grip on his weapon all over again.

There, in the sunlit yard, framed by a canyon of deformed cars, was his brother, Sam.

"Sam?" Dean found himself whispering, knowing that it was impossible what his eyes were showing him, knowing that it was a trick, that he should be lunging at the thing wearing his brother's face instead of staring. But staring was all that Dean could do.

And then the thing wearing Sam's face smiled, a smirk that Dean had only seen on his brother's lips when Lucifer was inside him.

When Dean raised his weapon to attack, it was too late. The thing that looked like Sam had charged forward and punched him with such strength that Dean felt himself flying from his wheelchair. He didn't even remember landing.

 **≪◇≫**

"Who is responsible for this?" Marcus shouted above the noisy alarm. He stood in the center of the room, staring at the wreckage of equipment and cables.

Dean was once again settled on the bed and around him, doctors and nurses who'd been scrambling to clean up the mess their patient had made of the room, froze. No one spoke. The guards who'd suffered the brunt of Dean's confused, violent outbreak, some dabbing at bloodied lips and noses, others quietly attempted to tuck in their shirts, stopped as well.

"And someone stop that goddamn infernal alarm!" Marcus added again when no one spoke up.

One of the straps holding Dean's arms to the bed was broken, snapped right in the middle. The machines surrounding the bed were beeping wildly, alerting everyone to the obvious fact that something was amiss.

Marcus had arrived to chaos. One of the doctors was flat against the wall, knocked unconscious; two of the computers were knocked sideways, letting out annoying screeches of error message and one of the bags of fluids that had been hanging near Dean's body was forgotten on the floor, quietly leaking its contents into the carpet. All of that caused, it seemed, by a man who, by all rights, shouldn't even be awake, much less moving

And yet...

Dean had managed to break free of his restraints and destroy half the room. It had taken three guards to get him back on the bed.

"Was he conscious? Was he aware of where he was?" Marcus questioned the trembling man in a lab coat even as he got to unsteady feet.

"I—I don—" the man stuttered, righting his glasses on his nose. The frames were bent out of shape and rested crooked at the edge of his swallowing nose. "It was all so fas—"

"Quit stalling! Was he awake? Was he aware?"

The man backed away, spine straightening and looking at the angry man yelling at him. "Awake? Yes, without a doubt. Aware? Hardly possible with all the drugs in his system," he said quietly, swallowing his fear. "And you know what? I don't care how much power you have or how many ways you can end my career. I'm done!" he said, throwing ruined glasses on the floor. "Any further questions you have, you can either shove them up your ass or ask them to the poor bastard that replaces me, because I'm out of here! I'm tired of this Mengelian crap and I'm sick of your craziness!"

Marcus looked astounded as the doctor banged the door and left. People did not quit on him. They got fired or they got screwed but either way, it was Marcus decision, not his employees.

And that was one employee who had seen too much. Even with the non-disclosure contract that all of his workers were forced to sign before getting that first, fat paycheck, there was too much to lose if that man ever decided to grow a conscience and open his mouth.

Marcus followed him outside, watching as the doctor walked resolutely toward the stairs, muttering to himself. He couldn't afford to let him get out, not when they were so close to succeeding.

Looking around, Marcus grabbed the first thing he could; an iron sculpture of Rodin's Thinking Man that sat on top of a side table on the corridor. The small object d'art was far heavier than its appearance would suggest.

Dr. Rudolph's skull was no match for it when Marcus smashed the sculpture against his head. Bone caved in like ripe fruit and blood sprayed all over Marcus and the walls.

The doctor's body thumped to the floor, sound muffled by the expensive carpets. He died so fast that no even a moan managed to escape his lips.

Marcus dropped the statute, the head of the Thinking Man breaking on contact with the floor.

Two men with broken heads, Marcus thought, watching as Rudolph's blood spread across the floor. It was the first man that Marcus had ever killed with his own hands. He had expected to feel something, to taste some form of regret or fear. Instead, there was nothing, apart from a vague sense of nuisance over the prospect of having to replace that carpet.

Looking up, Marcus found himself staring at a woman of Asian origins, hidden behind the Ming vase in the small alcove by the window.

"What are you doing here?"

  
≪◇≫  
Sam would’ve given anything to go nearer to that room and see what was happening inside. More than that, he wanted nothing more than to rush in, get his brother and get him the hell out of there. But he and Dean weren’t the only ones at risk now – now there was Brenda to consider; he couldn’t be that reckless with her body.  
   
“I didn’t signed up for this,” the man who had rushed out of the room kept whispering as he passed Sam in a hurry without even seeing him. “I didn’t fucking sign up for this shit.”  
   
A second man, the one who had left the room in pursuit of the muttering doctor, was not one of the guards. Beside the fact that he was lacking the black clothes that all security guards in there seemed to favor, the man was far too short and skinny to be a paid muscle. In fact, as Sam watched him pick up something from a table, Sam thought that he looked like he owned the place.  
   
Those, however, were details that registered only in the background of Sam’s mind as he noticed the most important fact: he had left the door ajar behind him.  
   
Sam moved slightly to the left, trying to find a better angle to see inside the room. All he could glimpse were a pair of legs, clad in white pajamas, lying on top of a metal platform of some sort. Blue wires, softly glowing, ran from the floor to the platform, disappearing under the sheet.  
   
There was no way for Sam to recognize his brother from just a pair of legs. And yet, Sam _knew_ that it was Dean. He could almost imagine the rest of his brother’s body, lying on that cold table, surrounded by strangers.  
   
What were they doing to Dean?  
   
The dry thud that sounded from too close was not the answer that Sam was hoping for. Turning his attention back to the two men, Sam was not prepared for the sight of the muttering doctor being struck from behind and falling just a few feet from where he hid. Dead.  
   
Breath seized inside Sam’s –Brenda’s- chest. The man was dead, just like that, as if his life was of no consequence whatsoever.  
   
And his killer was staring right at Sam.  
   
“What are you doing here?”  
   
Sam startled, realizing that the angry question had been directed at him. He looked up shyly, meeting the eyes of the man standing in front of him.  
   
From Bobby’s description and the pictures he’d seen in his research, Sam was sure that he was staring at boss himself. Marcus.  
   
He didn’t look pleased.  
   
“I—“  
   
Sam froze. He was out of his element, literally out of his body and he knew that petite Brenda would be no match for Marcus. Sam could remember all too well how it had felt trying to fight those tight ropes while he’d been in Gary’s body and realizing that his muscles and strength were sorely missed.  
   
In a way, Brenda was even more fragile and weak than Gary had been.  
   
The knowledge that he was helpless and that he was putting Brenda’s body at risk made Sam’s brain short circuit in a manner that hadn’t happen in years.  
   
Suddenly, he was all of ten years old again, on his first hunt with dad and Dean, watching a werewolf running towards him.  
   
It wasn’t paws and claws that hit Sam this time though. It was a fist.  
   
Dean hit him harder than that when they sparred, and yet Sam found his borrowed body fly through the air as if gravity had taken a leave of absence all of a sudden.  
   
Sam had time only for three lightning quick thoughts: that his head was heading straight to the corner of the railing by the stairs; that Brenda would forever be stuck inside a man’s body and that Sam would never see Dean again.  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
The short woman left her hiding place and looked up. She was wearing the uniform of his house staff, but Marcus’ house staff all knew better than to come to that floor. It was strictly forbidden.  
   
She had seen everything. It was impossible not to, not when Marcus had just murdered a man in cold blood less than five feet from where she’d been hiding.  
   
“I—“ the woman stuttered. Marcus was not in the mood for more stuttering, incompetent people. His house, it seemed, was filled with them.  
   
A red haze settled over Marcus’ vision as he punched the woman and sent her flying backwards. It hadn’t been his intention to hit her that hard, but as he saw her head connect with the edge of the staircase and heard the sickening sound of her neck cracking, Marcus realized that it was for the best.  
   
She had seen him kill another man. He couldn’t let her go after that.  
   
Turning around, Marcus found himself face to face with three of his security men. They stood around, stunned looks on their faces, sharing questioning gazes as they stared at the two bodies on the floor.  
   
Curious and stunned though they were, Marcus knew he would get no trouble. He’d gone through great pains to hire men who’d do as they were told and not ask any questions. Desperate men who needed money; most with police records and a lot to lose if word got out about what was going on inside that house.  
   
“Clean up this mess,” Marcus ordered, going back to the room where he had left Dean. “I expect that at least one of you knows of a decent way to get rid of a body.”  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Lisa was in a hospital bed, her once vibrant face now pale and washed out. Her mouth, used to laugh long and often, was now lax, a plastic tube disappearing between her nearly colorless lips.  
   
Ben was sitting beside her, face washed in tears, looking at him accusingly.  
   
“You killed her,” Ben said, his voice echoing in the small room and rolling inside Dean’s head like steel marbles.  
   
“You killed me,” Lisa joined her son’s accusing tone.  
   
Startled, Dean forced himself to look at Lisa. There was blood, oozing through the corners of her lips and her eyes were no longer shut. She was looking straight at him with the black-oil gaze of a demon.  
   
Dean gasped awake.  
   
Blinking the wetness off his eyes, Dean couldn’t be sure how much of it was tears and how much of it was sweat. He was drenched.  
   
Pulling himself up, Dean walked to the bathroom at the end of corridor. The floor was cold, spreading goosebumps all over his skin. His feet bumped into a steel wheel and Dean scowled down. What was Bobby’s wheel chair doing on the second floor?  
   
Looking closely, however, Dean could see the differences now. The lower hand grip; the quality of the leather...  it wasn’t Bobby’s chair. It was his.  
   
Dean gasped awake, heart pumping against his ribs. He had no idea if he was awake or still asleep. He had no idea where he was.  
   
The last thing Dean remembered was walking through Bobby’s yard and being attack. Sam—something wearing Sam’s face had attacked him.  
   
Dean felt his face, searching for broken bones. He had felt his face colliding with the ground, felt the pain of the impact. Had he been dreaming that as well?  
   
Feeling only smooth skin under his fingers, Dean moved his exploration from his cheek to his leg. He pinched his right leg, then his left, needing to be sure. The sensation of standing up and walking to the bathroom had been so intense and detailed that, for a moment, Dean had believed it to be real.  
   
There was only lifeless rubber under Dean’s fingers. No matter how hard he pinched, he couldn’t feel a thing.  
   
“You okay?” Ben’s voice sounded from the dark.  
   
They were sharing a room, Dean remembered. Because Bobby’s house was full of students, crashing over.  
   
“I’m okay,“ Dean lied. “Go back to sleep.”  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


  


  


  
**  
  
**   


  
Sam woke with a gasp, jumping from the bed like a loose spring. He looked around, dazzled, confused about where he was. Tears sprung from Sam’s eyes even before he realized why he was crying.  
   
And then he remembered. The strange feeling of his skull cracking, of a bright white light and floating in nothingness.  
   
Sam’s hand lifted, touching the left side of his head. There was no pain, no wetness, not even stitches. “I killed her,” Sam whispered to the empty room, biting the sob that threatened to escape. “Oh, God... I killed her!”  
   
Sam was losing his stomach lining over the toilet in the bathroom where he heard Bobby arriving.  
   
“You missing the damn check in,” Bobby’s gruff voice announced, even before the man himself came into view. One look at Sam, on his knees by the dirty toilet, pale faced and with red-rimmed eyes and the older hunter knew that something had gone terribly wrong. “Take it easy,” he said, turning the cold faucet open and soaking a towel. “What’s wrong?”  
   
Sam accepted it with an exhausted sigh. “Brenda’s dead,” he whispered, voice shot to hell from all the bile that had been coming up. “I killed her.”  
   
“What!? What the hell happened, Sam?” Bobby asked, knowing from Sam reaction that things were far from being that linear.  
   
Sam met his eyes. How to explain to another person that he had felt his body die just seconds before? “Brenda... the woman we kidnapped,” Sam explained, the sound of her name making his chest hurt. “She’s dead.”  
   
Bobby cursed, leaning back on the chair he’d pulled next to the motel bed. “I got that part, son. Now... tell me exactly how that happened.”  
   
Sam rubbed his face, forcing himself to snap out of it, to fight the numbness that was threatening to set in. It didn’t help his guilt and shame that he was happy that his soul had snapped back to his body instead of dying with Brenda like Sam figured it would; that Sam could still help Dean despite the life he had taken.  
   
He told Bobby everything.  
   
“Son of bitch!” Bobby let out, red anger coloring his cheeks.  
   
“We used her for our purposes, Bobby,” Sam said quietly. “We’re responsible for her death just as much as Marcus is.”  
   
Bobby sighed. Rubbed his head. He knew Sam was right even if there was nothing that they could do about it.  
   
“You sure that was Dean in that room?” Bobby asked, moving onto the things they could actually do something about.  
   
Sam nodded. Even without seeing his brother’s face, there was no mistaking that scream or the feeling of anger that had filled Sam when he saw the treatment that Dean was suffering at the hands of those people. “It looked like a hospital room... there was a doctor there,” he said, reminding himself of the man in the white coat that had died in front of him. “Bobby... I don’t know what they were doing to Dean, but we need to get him out of there. Now!”  
   
Bobby twisted his nose. Sam knew it wasn’t because he disagreed with Sam’s words.  
   
“How many guards did you say you saw in there?”  
   
Sam paused, thinking back. “Twenty inside the house,” he answered without hesitation. “Probably more in the surrounding grounds.”  
   
Bobby nodded. It was a number that neither of them liked. “Armed?”  
   
It was Sam’s turn to nod. “Smith and Wesson semi-automatic 9mm on a couple of them,” he said from memory. “Taser guns on almost all of them.”  
   
“Jesus Christ!” Bobby let out in frustration. “That’s one hell of a private army the man has guarding the place. What’s he up to? Take over the world? And how do you suppose we get past _that_ to get Dean out?”  
   
Sam’s eyes hardened. “We’ve faced more angels and demons than that before.”  
   
“We can’t just kill them all, Sam,” Bobby said, as if Sam needed to be reminded of that fact. Given the way Sam had behaved when he was soulless, Sam couldn’t blame the older man for having his doubts.  
   
“You’re right,” Sam reassured the older man. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll need help. We need a way in.”  
   
The sound of the flushing toiled drowned the rest of their doubts.  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
“I’m gonna come right out and start by saying that the only thing we’ll be teaching you in here is how to make do for yourselves,” Dean started, rolling his chair to the front of the group of people gathered inside the shed. “We’ll tell you what’s real, what’s bogus, where to find information and how it can be killed. After that, it’s up to you.”  
   
The nineteen men and women in front of Dean nodded. The air inside the shed was heavy with purpose and Dean suddenly felt that this could turn a lot bigger than he had ever wanted it to be. People were starving for knowledge, and Dean had shown them the way to an all you can eat buffet.  
   
And Ben... Ben was the most starved of all. It showed in his body language and how he stood so close to Dean as he spoke that he might as well be in his lap.  
   
Sam used to do that. The more attention he paid to a subject matter, the closer he got to it, even without noticing. Like a moth, drawn to the flame.  
   
The hunters’ took turns teaching, each taking the subject they were best at.  
   
David taught them the basics, the foundations of every hunter worth his or hers salt: how things manifested themselves, how they worked, how they thought (the ones that did, anyway). Demons, ghosts, poltergeists, shapeshifters, thought-forms, every freak on earth from A to Z.  
   
Anne taught them about protective spells, charms and sigils. Enough Latin and other dead languages along with arts and crafts classes enough to make them all feel like they were at Hogwarts. It quickly became a running joke, amongst all but the hunters.  
   
Daniel taught them how to kill. Those were always noisy classes.  
   
Dean taught about what no one else knew. Angels. Specifically, who they were, their weaknesses, how to protect yourself from them, _why_ there was a need to seek protection from them in the first place. And should the need arise, how to kill them.  
   
“It will be harder to convince anyone to become a vessel voluntarily if you keep referring to me and my brothers as ‘ _self-righteous dicks’_ ,” Jacob said, announcing his presence.  
   
Startled, Dean dropped the beer his hands. It shattered against the floor in a splatter of glass and foam.  
   
Swearing viciously, Dean spun from the open refrigerator to face the angel. Jacob was leaning casually against the doorframe, carefully eyeing the messy surroundings with a disapproving scowl on his face. “How the hell did you get in?”  
   
There were protective sigils all over the property, enough Enochian to give Raphael himself pause should he decide to drop by and visit. No angel should be able to set foot inside the grounds of Bobby’s old salvage yard.  
   
The spilled beer smelled rancid in the air and Dean grabbed a mop to soak the yellow foam and shattered glass.  
   
The smell twisted the world around him. Dean saw himself in a mirror, his reflection frowning at him from behind a counter, framed by bottles of cheap malts. The place was barely lit, red lights glinting off a row of hanging glasses right above him. There was a drink in Dean’s hands, whiskey from the color of it, but all that Dean could taste in his mouth was ash.  
   
He was trying to drown his feelings, he knew that much. Dean was just having trouble figuring out what he was drowning this time. He had spent his last years depending on alcohol to quieten the screaming voices inside his head. The whiskey was a wonderful gag.  
   
He must’ve had a few already because it was working. All he could feel was one big emptiness inside of him, like someone had grabbed a spoon and gouged out his insides until there was nothing in there but void and pain.  
   
When Dean got up to leave, there was someone waiting for him. He had seen the two tall men who had sat in a corner of the bar, watching him. Dean had paid them no attention at the time, not caring about what business was theirs.  
   
Their business became his when men clubbed him in the head and drop him inside a moving car. They had stunk of stale beer.  
   
“You missed a spot,” Jacob said, referring to either the sigils or the beer. Dean didn’t care much which. “I need to talk to you.”  
   
Dean blinked, shaking himself into the present before he turned and scowled at the angel, leaning back casually against his chair. “If this is about Ben again, you can kis—“  
   
“Ben will make his own choice when the time comes,” Jacob cut in dryly. “I am here to discuss another matter.”  
   
Dean took another beer from the fridge and after popping the cap, took a long drink, buying himself some time. He didn’t trust this angel any more than he trusted any of those winged pricks he’d met before, but Jacob did seem sincere about his claim of wanting to stop Raphael from flushing the world down the toilet. “I’m listening,” he said, motioning with his beer bottle.  
   
“We think we have discovered a way to assure the defeat of Raphael and his followers,” the angel said, a glint of excitement in his human eyes. “The Holy Nails.”  
   
Dean made no effort to hide the fact that the name told him squat. “You’re going to give Raphael a manicure?” he asked, taking another sip.  
   
The long suffering look of annoyance on Jacob’s face reminded Dean of Castiel. It still hurt.  
   
“I’m talking about the nails used to stake Jesus to his cross,” Jacob clarified. “Whomever possesses the is capable of controlling whole armies and lead them into victory.”  
   
“Lemme guess... this is another one of those Heaven’ super secret weapons that got stolen in the confusion when Michael left the building,” Dean ventured.  
   
The second the words left his mouth, Dean paused. He had no idea why he had said that, or how he had come to possess that knowledge. It was like knowing the lyrics to a song without remembering the tune; Dean knew that Heaven was in chaos and that... someone had taken advantage of that to steal Heaven’s most powerful weapons. Dean even knew that those weapons implied some sort of power balance in between Raphael and Cas...  
   
The electric jolt in his back spasmed through Dean’s whole body, muscles seizing and tensing in frozen uselessness. The bottle in his hand was forgotten as Dean fingers bent at impossible angles, out of his control. Glass struck the ground, splashing beer all over the kitchen floor for the second time in less than five minutes.  
   
Through the pain, Dean saw a man, leaning against the handrail of Bobby’s stairs. Tall and lean, blond hair cut in a fashionable form and clothes a lot more casual than Castiel or any of his brothers had ever worn. A hedonist-looking angel, buying souls like a common demon. The figure by the stairs didn’t open his smirking mouth, but Dean was sure that if he did, it was a British accent that would’ve come out.  
   
“Hey... HEY!”  
   
Dean blinked, staring dumbfound at the white foam mess in the floor at his feet.  
   
“HEY! What in damnation is wrong with you? Quit zoning out when people are talking to you!”  
   
It was Jacob’s voice. He sounded annoyed; like it was Dean’s fault that this kept happening.  
   
“Only happens with the really boring ones,” Dean blurted out, grounding himself back to the here and now, instead of the... whatever the hell that had been.  
   
“Me telling you about the one thing that can make sure that Raphael goes away for good and the world doesn’t end bloody is boring?” the angel said, actually sounding offended. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture so human that it surprised Dean. “Maybe coming here was just a giant waste of my time.”  
   
“You wouldn’t have come if you really believed that,” Dean pointed out. “You’re here because you need something from me. What is it?”  
   
From the way Jacob decided that the spilled beer was a lot more interesting to look at rather than meeting Dean’s eyes, Dean knew he was right.  
   
“I know where to find one of the Holy Nails,” he started. “But I can’t get to it. No angel can.”  
   
“Enochian sigils?” Dean guessed.  
   
Jacob nodded. “I need someone trustworthy to go with me and get it.”  
   
Dean had never heard of any lore surrounding the Holy Nails, but he was aware of the importance given to any sort of religious relic. He had little reason to doubt that what Jacob was telling him was the truth. And if the angel could get his hands on something that would guarantee him victory in the coming battle, Ben’s use as a vessel would become a moot point. “Okay, then... I’ll help you,” Dean voiced.  
   
The angel frowned. “I’m sorry, you’ve misunderstood me,” he said, looking slightly embarrassed. “It is Ben’s help that I need, not yours. The place where the Nail is kept is not exactly...” he hesitated, searching for the right words. The way his gaze wandered towards Dean’s wheelchair made it easy to guess what he was going to say next. “...handicap friendly.”  
   
“Ben’s not going anywhere with out me,” Dean let out slowly, leaving no room for discussion. “So, take it... or—“  
   
“Or what?” Jacob asked, calling Dean’s bluff.  
   
Dean wanted to open his mouth and tell him to shove his high horse where the sun don’t shine and ride it all the way to Hell, but the bastard was right. In the end, it was Ben’s decision, not Dean’s, and the only thing he could do was advising his son the best he could.  
   
Still, the defiant tone on the angel irked the hunter in Dean; he was itching to send Jacob’s feathery ass packing, just on principal alone, but this time the angel had truly caught him with his pants around his ankles. Dean had trusted the Enochian sigils too much to place any other measures around the house.  
   
“Or your shiny vessel is getting a whole new collection of holy holes besides the one in his ass!”  
   
The voice belonged to Daniel, but Anne and David were standing right beside him, shotguns held high and steady.  
   
“You know buckshot, or rock salt, or whatever the crap you’ve put into those shells,” Jacob pointed out, looking slightly offended, “it won’t work... except if your goal is to piss me off and grow an appetite for tearing your head out.”  
   
“Holy Oil core,” Anne informed him with a smile, cocking her gun and chambering one of the bullets. “Guaranteed to ignite on impact and burn like a motherfucker.”  
   
Jacob raised one eyebrow, looking at each of them in contempt. “Fine,” he let out, hands thrown in the air. “You wanna come? Come! Be my guest... hell, come all of you!”  
   
“Fine,” Dean echoed, mimicking the angel’s tone. “We will.” There was strength in numbers and Dean more than welcomed the extra help in keeping Ben safe.  
   
“God... I really miss the days when all we had to do was lit a bush on fire and you guys listened to what we said...” the angel grumbled before disappearing in a flutter of wings.  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Before drinking the tea and connecting himself to the machine for one last time, Marcus made sure that everything was ready and set in place. They had been working relentlessly through the last week to get to this point; there would be no room for mistakes now.  
   
Inside Dean’s head, in the world that had been created specifically for him, everything was set in motion as well. The players were positioned; all they needed to do was play their parts.  
   
Marcus opened his eyes and looked at his surroundings through the eyes of the persona he had picked for himself. He and Dean were sitting at the dinner table, eating waffles.  
   
From the somber look in Dean’s face and the flurry of movement throughout the whole house, Marcus knew that they were ready to join Jacob in his quest for the Nail. The excitement and sense of danger were physical things that could almost be touch, hanging heavily in the air as they were. Dean looked at him like he was about to take him by hand to the gallows.  
   
In the beginning, while others had discussed endlessly about which acquaintance of Dean’s would be best for Marcus to assume, in his mind there had never been any doubt.  
   
Though the consensus had leaned towards figures that Dean would respect, like Bobby, or his father, or even Sam, Marcus had been adamant.  
   
He would be someone who Dean would do anything for, someone Dean would protect with his own life.  
   
He smiled reassuringly at Dean as a hand that wasn’t really his reached out to grab a bottle and spilled honey colored syrup all over his waffles.  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
They arrived in between two tall bookshelves, in a corridor lined with shelf upon shelf. The space between them was so tiny that Dean’s chair barely fit.  
   
Dean looked up. The top of the bookshelves hit the low ceiling and each was filled top to bottom with books and large paper archives identified in a language that he couldn’t understand. The lights, enclosed in the fake ceiling, were dim, barely allowing them to see their surroundings. Everything smelled of dust and old paper.  
   
The weak light and the enclosed feeling of the place made Dean feel like he was inside a cave. The place, however, was clearly man-made. Even if it was cold as the deepest of caverns.  
   
Ben and the others were walking around with their mouths hanging open, looking at the various tomes on display. “Where are we?” he asked Jacob.  
   
“The Pope’s private archives,” Jacob informed, making his way to the end of the corridor. “The Vatican’s Secret storage rooms, underneath Vatican Museum.”  
   
“The Vat—“ Dean started, sharing a confused look with the others. “We’re in Rome?!” He looked around again. It looked like any storage place, if better organized than a few he’d seen before. “They have one of the Holy Nails here?”  
   
Jacob nodded, leading the others towards a door at the very end of the line of selves. “The Vatican doesn’t even know they have it,” he went on. “It’s hidden inside a statue. I’ll only know which one is it when I’m near it.”  
   
“How?”  
   
Jacob looked frustrated, apparently not used to having to explain every one of his actions. “It will be covered in Enochian sigils,” he explained. “Which is why I need someone else to come with me to get it. Someone human.”  
   
Dean nodded, rolling his chair carefully. It was hard to pull the handrails without any elbowroom as it was in that corridor, but Dean wasn’t about to call anyone for help in pushing him. they had more important tasks.  
   
Ben was already through the door, out of sight and Dean’s heart pumped harder. He had a bad feeling about this place.  
   
“I’m afraid this is as far as you can go, Dean,” Jacob said as Dean neared the door.  
   
“T’hell are you talking about?” Dean asked, pushing forward and nearly running over the angel’s toes as he passed the door. On the other side there was nothing but the beginning of a stainless steal stairway, spiraling downwards.  
   
“The rest of the archives are in the lower levels... that stairway is the only access. Handicap unfriendly, remember?”  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
To say that Balthazar was annoyed that they had summoned him again so soon after last time was putting it lightly. Bobby was pretty sure that half the windows that had shattered into glass-dust when he had arrived had more to do with petty revenge rather than angelic presence.  
   
“What part of not-a-man-service did you not get that first time around? Or the second?”  
   
Bobby sat back and let Sam run the show. The kid was growing progressively more and more frustrated with each day they failed to get Dean back and the death of that poor woman had only worsen matters.  
   
Rising to his full height, Sam towered over the angel for a second before opening his mouth. “Dean’s still missing.”  
   
“I’m aware. I helped. I’m out of here,” Balthazar announced, a bored expression on his face.  
   
Sam grabbed the angel by his sleeve before he could flap his wings and fly away. “We need your help again.”  
   
“And why would I do that?” the angel asked with a rise of his eyebrow. “It’s not like Dean’s my favorite person in the whole wide world or I don’t have anything better to do.”  
   
“Because I’m not above telling Cass that you’ve joined our side,” Sam said, his face set in stone.  
   
Balthazar eyed him in surprise, apparently not quite believing what he was hearing. Something in Sam’s cold expression made him realize that yes, Sam was very serious about his threat. “What do you need now?”  
   
“Something from your personal collection,” Bobby said, finally joining the conversation and handing a photo to the angel.  
   
“Fucking hell,” Balthazar let out, sagging against the worn out couch. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Marcus knew how Dean’s mind worked. He had been the one inside it, not the others. He understood Dean’s need to protect those he loved. And to get what Marcus needed of him, there was nothing like the love of a father towards his son.  
   
He knew what his therapist would say, that Marcus was searching for the fatherly relationship that his own father never gave him; that he was trying to prove to himself that fathers can be without manipulative thoughts towards their sons and that love and violence can be two very different things.  
   
His therapist was a fool.  
   
Marcus chose Ben not because he enjoyed the feeling of being the center of Dean’s world, but because when the time came, it would be for Ben and nobody else that Dean would do what was needed.  
   
Summoning an angel.  
   
They had tried it before. With every new angelic name that was found inside Dean’s head, they had tried using a summoning spell.  
   
None had answered. Some, Marcus learned after, hadn’t answered because they were dead or trapped in Hell. Others, however, he had no idea why.  
   
The fact was that his summonings were consistently ignored and Marcus couldn’t have that.  
   
The elaborate story that had been woven around Dean’s relationship with Ben had served the sole purpose of getting him ready for that one instant, that one moment when Dean would call Castiel and the angel would answer.  
   
Lisa’s death had been the starting point and would be the final push that, according to the best minds behind the whole scheme, would force Dean into that action.  
   
As far as the dream world went, the car crash where Lisa had lost her life had actually never happened. The memory of it, however, had been easy to plant in Dean’s confused mind, weakening his defenses with the added sense of guilt of not having been able to save her. After a while, Dean himself had started to fill in the details.  
   
The mind was funny like that. No room for holes or unexplained events in there.  
   
Jacob had been Marcus’ creation, a made up angel to lure Dean into the situation he was in now. A catalyst that would drag Dean away from the comfort zone he had devised for himself to cope with everything else. Kicking and screaming.  
   
The man’s ability to adapt was truly astonishing. They had to step up and react accordingly. Jacob had proven to be the perfect menace to arouse Dean’s need to protect Ben.  
   
After all, Dean’s resistance to being taken by an angel was something that, oddly enough, Marcus could relate. Despite the fact that all of his efforts were being funneled towards that exact objective, the idea of being trapped inside your own body with no power over your actions terrified Marcus as much as it did Dean.  
   


  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Dean exchanged a look with Ben. The conflict in the boy’s face was easy to see; while he wanted desperately to join the others who’d already started down the stairs, he didn’t want to do it against Dean’s will.  
   
“So,” Dean glanced at the angel then back to the steep, descending steps in dubious frustration. “What are you waiting for? ‘Beam’ me down there, like you did in the other room.”  
   
“I can’t,” Jacob said.  
   
“ _Can’t_?” Dean repeated slowly. “Or won’t?”  
   
“I _can’t_... there is something in the whole bunker that is diminishing my powers,” Jacob explained. “We’ll return in minutes, you do not have to worry. This, however,” he said, hands waving in between the three of them, “is precious time that we are wasting.”  
   
Dean moved forward, to the edge of the steps. “ _We_ are going nowhere,” he said resolutely. “Ben is staying here with me. There’s three hunters down there, all capable and reliable people. This ain’t Excalibur stuck in a rock; any of them can do it for you.”  
   
Ben’s stance crumpled, disappointment written all over his face. “Please,” Dean added before Ben could open his mouth to protest. “Trust me on this. You need to stay with me.”  
   
Jacob looked between the two of them, waiting for Ben to challenge Dean’s command. When the boy only nodded quietly and stayed put, the angel sighed. “You know...” Jacob said, his hand resting against the handrail, “Castiel always regretted not having been able to help you that last time you asked. I was with him that day, both of us, fighting for our lives... I saw how much it cost him not to answer your prayers.”  
   
Dean’s heart skipped a bit. He looked at Ben, dreading what the kid’s reaction might be.  
   
It felt like just yesterday that Lisa had died, inches away from him, Dean’s name on her lips as Dean himself cried for Castiel to help her. He had never told Ben about that. He hadn’t wanted the boy to learn about it from Jacob’s mouth either.  
   
Father and son remained quietly watching one another.  
   
“I’m sorry for what you lost,” Jacob went on. “But that should not overshadow your confidence in our kind. Not everyone can touch that artifact without being burned... it needs to be Ben, or his father. Chose.”  
   
Dean had always worked under the assumption that Castiel hadn’t answered him because he didn’t want to. The idea that Cass might not have been able to, had never, to Dean’s shame, crossed his mind.  
   
Dean stared at the empty staircase. He could either let them lose that opportunity to finish what Castiel had started, or he could let himself trust another angel and allow Ben to go down with Jacob.  
   
“Really, it’s not like the evil archives are going to eat me,” Ben said, breaking Dean’s thoughts. He sounded like he’d been talking for a while. “I mean, what’s the point of coming this far and stay out of it? I’m old enough, dad... let me do this.”  
   
“The ‘ _point_ ’ is staying alive, Ben,” Dean said, peering down. It was too dark; he couldn’t even see beyond the first five steps. He finally acquiesced with a sigh. “Be careful,” he said, knowing that Ben would understand the blessing behind the words.  
   
The boy almost skipped down the stairs, eager to be involved, to do something. “Thanks dad,” his voice echoed up the stairs, already lost in the darkness.

  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Sam pushed the cold cheeseburger into his mouth, barely tasting it before swallowing. It was more of a task than a meal, but Bobby was right. If they were doing this, they were doing it right. And that meant taking care of themselves too.  
   
More than once since Dean had gone missing, Sam had wished that he was still that soulless version of himself that he had no memories of. He never voiced those wishes; Bobby already threw him enough odd looks without knowing about that. But the fact was, Sam knew that soulless-him wouldn’t be this heartbroken about Dean being taken; soulless-him wouldn’t have felt a damn thing, he was sure, and that would’ve made him all the more deadly and effective.  
   
He wouldn’t care, but he probably would’ve found Dean a lot sooner.  
   
Caring and worrying, however, meant losing his temper over the phone when one more clue proved pointless; meant losing sleep because he couldn’t rest until he was sure Dean was okay; meant losing his appetite because his throat was too tight with concern to allow any food to pass.  
   
Up until the point when they had stumbled across Marcus’ enquiries about the Winchesters, it could’ve meant losing Dean.  
   
It stung to realize that the worst version of himself would be better at handling this than Sam was.

  
**≪◇≫**   


   
Left alone at the top, Dean got down to business as soon as he was alone. Unsheathing the knife he’d brought with him, Dean pressed the blade against his palm, drawing a thin red line across the skin before he started to draw the banishing sigil that would make sure that any unwanted angel-visits could be sent packing. Or, at the very least, Dean could send Jacob packing if he decided to get frisky with Ben when this was all over.  
   
No matter what Ben wanted of him or what Jacob said, Dean could not bring himself to trust completely in another angel. Not after last time.  
   
 _Stand behind me. The one time I ask._  
   
The words echoed inside Dean’s mind in Castiel’s unmistakable voice. They had sounded so close and real that he turned his head around, looking for the angel.  
   
There were dead demons lying all around him. On the floor, a devil’s trap painted in red and in its center, a chair soaked in sweat and blood. Bobby’s shed turned into a horror house for demons.  
   
Castiel’s eyes were on him, begging Dean to trust him. But Dean couldn’t find it within himself to do that. Not when the angel had abandoned him when Lisa’s life was ebbing away—  
   
No, that was wrong. Lisa was still alive, just... taken. By Crowley.  
   
No... she had died in a car crash. Because of him.  
   
Dean grabbed his head. It felt like his brain was on fire, expanding and contracting inside his skull like a pulsing heart.  
   
“Dean... Dean!”  
   
Ben’s voice was faint and muffled, like Dean was hearing him from under water. Or from the bottom of a set of stairs.  
   
“DEAN! The lights!”  
   
The escalating fear in the Ben’s voice pulled Dean back to reality like a snapping rubber band.  
   
Looking up, Dean saw immediately the reason for the boy’s panic. The lights were flickering like they were on in the throws of a seizure. Starting from the far end of the archive, light bulbs exploded in a row, creating a continuous shower of glass and sparkles that ended with the whole place plunging into darkness.  
   
Just as the emergency lights kicked in, turning the world red, the high-pitched sound became clear. It was loud and shrilling, threatening to shatter eardrums as easily as it had done to the light bulbs, growing in strength as it moved like a living thing. Dean knew what this was, he knew who was coming; he reached his hand to complete the sigil, but it was already too late.  
   
“Dean Winchester,” a deep, melodious voice spoke. “Our paths keep crossing... it is most annoying.”  
   
His ears still ringing from the ear-piercing assault, Dean looked up, finally seeing who had spoken. The tall, dark skinned man was imposing enough, but the being inside him was, Dean knew, far more dangerous. Raphael, the archangel.  
   
The image of an equally imposing, dark skinned woman in a business suit and an expression on her face to match, flickered over Raphael’s current vessel.  
   
Dean shook his head, trying to dislodge the splitting image from his vision. “I was going to say the same thing,” he said. Time, he needed to buy some time so that Ben and the others who’d gone below could escape. Keep the archangel busy so that they could find a way to get Ben to safety. “What are you doing here?”  
   
“You know why I’m here, Dean,” the archangel said with that infinite patient tone that he seemed to be fond of. “The same reason why Jacob is... the same reason you are.”  
   
A drop of sweat glided down Dean’s neck. “Searching for the world’s oldest porn magazine?” he offered with a smirk; from below he could hear nothing but silence.  
   
“Stand aside, Dean Winchester,” Raphael’s voice boomed across the walls, as if plaster itself recoiled from the power hidden behind those words. “My business with you is for later. For now, I require only the Holy Nail.”  
   
“Can’t let you do that,” Dean heard himself saying. In truth, he had no way to stop the archangel from going over him and down those stairs. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.  
   
A quick in and out, Jacob had assured them; no one would be around to even notice them there, he had said. And Dean, foolishly, had taken with him no other weapon but his knife and a flimsy shotgun.  
   
No holy oil; no banishing sigil, Dean recognized, looking at the bloody, half drawn symbol on the wall near him.  
   
When Raphael waved his hand and an invisible force pushed Dean off his chair and flying towards the far wall, Dean knew he’d already lost.

  
**≪◇≫**   


   
“I found what you need,” Bobby said over the phone. In front of him, Sam was nervously biting on his thumbnail. Bobby almost chuckled at the irony. “It wasn’t easy, but I found you one of the Holy Nails.”  
   
On the other side of the line, Bobby could almost hear the smile spreading across Marcus’ lips. Like the hissing of a rattlesnake.  
   
“ _I had every confidence you would,”_ the man said. “ _Congratulations, Mr. Singer. You’ve done an excellent job; one that will be generously rewarded.”_  
   
Bobby exchanged a look with Sam. “About that... I have a special request to ask of you.”  
   
 _“Name it.”_  
   
“When you test the Nail... I wanna be there.”  
   
“ _Why?_ ”  
   
“You’re calling an angel to do it, aren’t you? I wanna see that.”  
   
There was silence on the other side of the line and for a second, Bobby feared that they had played their hand too hard and lost the game even before it started.  
   
 _“You now... didn’t pegged you for the religious type.”_  
   
“I ain’t. I don’t even believe any of’m will show up,” Bobby answered defiantly. “But if an angel really does show up, I wanna lay my eyes on it. I mean, who would miss a chance like that?”  
   
There it was. The right amount of faith and challenge. Vinegar and sugar to catch one particularly tricky fly.  
   
The high-pitched laughter on the other side of the line made Bobby’s stomach burn. “Somethin’ funny?”  
   
“ _The amount of bullshit you manage to spout in a single breath, Mr. Singer_ ,” Marcus said from the other side. “ _We both know you’ve seen more angels in the past years than you’ve seen the inside of a barbershop. So, why don’t we cut the crap and you tell me your real price for the Nail?_ ”  
   
Bobby paused, sharing a concerned look with Sam that the younger man had no way of understanding.  
   
“What’s wrong?” Sam mouthed, trying to be as silent as he could.  
   
“Alright then... no more bull,” Bobby finally said. “I want in. Whatever it is you’re planning to do with that angel and that Nail, I want in. I’ve been dicked around enough by those bastards to waste the opportunity to see them taste a bit of their own medicine. I think I more than deserve it.”  
   
The laughter on the other side of the line changed tone. No longer mocking, it was now a clearly satisfied sound.  
   
“ _I like you better when you’re honest, Mr. Singer._ _I expect you here, tomorrow, at three_ ,” Marcus said cheerfully, cutting the connection before Bobby could say anything.

  
 **≪◇≫**

 

 

 

Daniel, Anne and David had been Dean's creation. Marcus was pretty sure that neither of them existed. He had checked; none of the other hunters had ever heard of them, their names weren't registered anywhere.

They were also, by Marcus' design, the first ones to die in the basement of the Vatican Museum archives. Red shirts, as far as he was concerned; side characters that Marcus hadn't really paid that much attention to, because really, they didn't matter.

For whatever reason Dean had conjured them up, one more level of protection that he seemed to gather around himself like a collector of rare things. They were nothing but distractions in what was to come.

Raphael, one of the angels that had ignored Marcus summoning ritual, appeared on cue in the millionaire's make-believe land. He would be the match that would light the fuse.

The same as with the three hunters, Marcus had had no hand in Dean's paralysis; that had been of Dean's own making as well. It was as if, somehow, the hunter could sense that he was trapped, that his freedom had been taken away from him. Or maybe he was truly punishing himself for Lisa's 'death'; Marcus had no interest in it either way.

The electric jolts were a whole different matter; as one of the scientists had explained it to him, they were a direct result from the fiber optic feed linked directly to Dean's spine and the brain's resistance to what it saw as an assault. Every time new information was fed into his mind, Dean felt it, rebelled against it and expressed itself in the only way it knew of: pain.

Fascinating as it was, Marcus had feared that the paralysis would somehow hinder his efforts to have Dean there as Ben died. In the end, it too had worked to his advantage.

 

 **≪◇≫**

 

When Dean opened his eyes again, he knew that not much time had passed. Instead of the silence of before, he could hear screaming.

Looking at the downward spiraling stairs and his upturned wheelchair, Dean bit down the angry cry of frustration that was climbing up his throat. More than the fact that he had no weapons to fight an archangel, it was the fact that he couldn't even _get_ to where the fight was happening that pissed Dean off.

Dragging himself across the floor until he was facing the first step, Dean peered down. "Ben?"

More screaming answered him, joined by the pointless boom of a weapon going off in closed quarters, the unmistakable sound of a body hitting a hard surface. The noise wasn't coming from very far. Dean figured that there was only one flight or two of stairs keeping him from his son. And one way or the other, Dean was going to get to the bottom of those steps and help Ben.

He dragged himself a couple of inches further, thanking the heavens for the fact that Raphael hadn't simply wiped out the sigil Dean had been working on, more invested in getting his hands on that artifact than concerning himself with invalid hunters.

One last hurried squiggle and Dean pressed his blood covered hand against the center of the drawing.

Below, the screams came to an abrupt stop as night turned into day. An eerie silence followed.

"Ben? Answer me, Ben!"

Hearing nothing, no answering call, no groan of life, Dean started moving. Dragging his lifeless legs in front of him, he sat on the first step. The view from there was dizzying, steep steps curling inwards and disappearing into the dark. Dean swallowed against the vertigo.

Using the strength of his arms alone, Dean started sliding down the steps two at a time, ignoring the pain as his butt hit the steps in bumps.

He was actually making good progress when a scream that he recognized all too well rose from below. "Ben!" he shouted. Concentration lost, his hand slipped. For one standstill moment, Dean believed that he would be able to compensate, that he would be able to grab hold of the stair's metal railing. But the dead weight of his legs dragged him down too fast, doubling the pull of gravity.

Off balance, Dean fell in an incontrollable tumble, arms instinctively curled around his head, trying to protect himself from the worst. Unable to tuck his legs in, the way his father had taught him so many years ago, Dean was helpless to stop the long limbs from flailing aimlessly against wall and railing and air and steps. It served only to somewhat slow down his descent.

The fall seemed to last forever, impossibly long. When it finally stopped and Dean could at last feel solid ground underneath him, he took a few moments for his vision to clear and his heart catch up to the fact that the world was no longer spinning wildly around him.

Dean tried to figure out how many bones he'd broken, see if he could move without passing out. To his surprise, he felt relatively fine. His arms hurt, and he was sure that a couple of fingers in his left hand were broken and his head felt hollow and achy, but he had expected worse.

All of that lost importance the second the smell of blood registered.

There was no sign of David, Anne or Daniel. However, the fact that their clothes were lying on top of distinct puddles of gooey blood, left little room for optimism. Dead. All three of them. Because of him.

"BEN!" Dean called at the top of his lungs. He could barely breathe, thinking that the next pile of bloody clothes his eyes would find would be... "BEN!"

Dean looked around frantically, trying to cover every inch of the large room in one glance.

Everything was destroyed and laid in ruins. It was impossible for anyone to have survived that.

He'd been too slow in finishing the sigil, too damn slow in casting those angels away in time of saving anyone. He had failed, Dean's mind kept telling him over and over again. There was no way Ben was still alive. He had failed.

Dean dragged his body over the bloody floor, barely taking notice of the upturned shelves and the ancient books scattered around. The palms of his hands crushed pieces of glass and ceramics as he moved forward, shards claiming place in his palms without Dean even registering the fact. There were fragments of stone statues and bent metal sculptures everywhere he looked.

His legs caught on something, stopping his progress and Dean looked back.

He stared, detachedly, at the piece of bone sticking out from his leg. The white fragment had pierced right through his clothing, peeking out like a submarine's periscope. The jeans, already soaked in the blood of others, had no more room for Dean's, even though he was sure that he had to be bleeding. He hadn't felt a thing.

Tugging the leg free only made the piece of bone change its angle, something that Dean sure would have him passing out from the pain alone, if he had any feeling below his thighs.

Dean moved forward. Until he found Ben alive and okay, he couldn't give a damn about broken bones or bleeding. If Ben was dead, none of it would matter anyway.

Seconds later, eyes still scanning the room, hazy in the dust from pulverized plaster and old books, he found Ben. The kid was on the floor, almost hidden behind a broken bust, the statue's face so large that the nose alone was about the size of Dean's arm. "BEN!"

There was no answer and Dean had no choice but to drag himself the rest of the way until he could touch the boy. His boy.

There was blood on Ben's clothes, Dean had seen that much from afar, but without touching him it was impossible to know how much of that sea of red was Ben's and how much was due to the lives that had been lost around him.

Arms trembling from the strain he was putting on them, Dean leaned against what was left of the statue and pulled Ben towards him. The kid's eyes were closed, his face a mask of pain. "Ben... come on... don't do this to me," he begged, not caring how broken he sounded. "Not you too."

Images of past losses jumbled themselves in Dean's mind; moments of terror and heartbreak playing like small videos in his mind's eye. His father, flat lining on a hospital bed; Sam, bleeding out in his arms on a cold, rainy night in a ghost town. And Lisa, broken and ripped to shreds in a dark warehouse...

 

Dean blinked. Lisa had died inside a car; their car.

 

Ben was still alive. Dean could feel his breath, ragged and faint, puffing against Dean's neck; he could feel Ben's heart beating, fast as a sparrow's, underneath the fingers that Dean had pressed against Ben's pulse.

Ben was alive, but Ben was dying. The gash cut across his belly was deep and large enough that Dean could see the kid's guts trying to spill out. Dean had no fingers left to try and push them back in; he couldn't let go of Ben's pulse and he couldn't stop caressing the boy's face, willing him to open his eyes and tell Dean that he was okay, that this was all make-believe. "Come on, Ben... don't do this to me... come one."

The only sound to come out of Ben's mouth, however, was a pained moan; it cut deeply into Dean's heart. "Dad..."

"I'm here, Ben," Dean said, his treacherous voice breaking on him. "I'm right here... not gonna leave you, son."

Out of despair, Dean looked at his cell phone one more time; they were too deep underground for him to get any reception, he already knew that. His hope for a different outcome this time around was crushed when he saw the phone's screen, still looking for an operator.

There was no one else around, no one within shouting distance. And Dean was useless, unable to just pick Ben up and take him to help.

Dean's vision grayed and suddenly he could feel Lisa's body, curled against his chest, hot blood soaking his shirt and making it stick to his skin. But he was running; he was running to save her.

Dean screamed, confused and angry at the images popping into his head, memories of events that he was sure had never happened. He screamed because Ben was dying in his arms and there was nothing that Dean could do to save him.

"Cass..." Dean whispered, more a sobbed sound than a voiced word. "Cass, if you're still out there... somewhere," he went on, swallowing his tears. "Plea- please-"

His throat closed before Dean could say the rest, before he could beg the angel to come to him. Castiel was gone, hiding from Raphael. Dead. There was no one left to answer Dean's call.

In his arms, Dean could feel the exact moment Ben stopped breathing. It was then, when grief threatened to blind him, that Dean saw the bright white light.

 

 **≪◇≫**

  
Dean's pain for not being able to save Ben was like a warm blanket, curling around Marcus like it was a physical thing. The hunter was crying openly now and Marcus could feel every one of the tears shed for Ben -for him- as if they were real.

The dream had seemed so real and solid that Marcus felt slightly disorientated when he was pulled back from it and into reality. One look around, however, was enough for him to center himself.

It was time.

He gave Dean one quick look, fascinated to see that, like in the dream, this Dean had tears escaping the corners of his closed eyes. The mind experienced and the body felt.

Marcus' attention went from Dean's still form to what was happening on the computer screens. It was like watching a virtual reality world. A life simulation, only with real people.

In one screen, there were a myriad of jumbled lines of varying colors, waving up and down at the rhythm of his thoughts: Dean's brain waves. In the screen next to it, a continuous stream of gibberish that made even less sense to Marcus, but one that he had been assured to be complex computer programming coding. It was there that they could insert any changes in the dream that Marcus decided. Their 'script', so to speak.

But it was the last screen that Marcus was interested in. It was the screen where brain waves and computer coding merged and translated into image; it was where they could see and record what Dean was experiencing.

Dean was looking at the dead figure of Ben in his arms through a veil of tears. His heart rate was galloping into dangerous numbers and his blood pressure was through the roof. Dean's physical well being, however, was the least of their concerns.

"Any minute now..." Marcus whispered, checking if the man in charge of the recording was ready and alert.

The man's finger pressed the right button even before any of them started to hear the words.

"Cass... Cass, if you're still out there... somewhere. Plea- please-"

The colorful lines on Dean's brain activity went fuzzy for a few seconds and Marcus knew that, right then, they had gotten what he needed.

"Got it sir," the tech said, sounding pleased with his performance. "We have a clear neural transmission that should work fine when broadcast."

Marcus smiled. Everything was finally lining up.

 

 **≪◇≫**

 

The older hunter exchanged a look with Sam as he hung off the phone. "It's set," he said gravely.

 

" _'I want in'_?" Sam couldn't help to parrot, a sneer in his lips. " _'I want in'_? What are you? Al Capone?"

 

"He's not even bothering to hide what he knows about me anymore," Bobby said, pulling his cap off to scrub his head. "He came right out and 'fessed up to the fact that he knew about my involvement in the whole angel confusion... I improvised."

 

"You ripped off 'The Godfather', that's what you did," Sam added with a pat on the other man's shoulder. "Dean would be proud."

 

Bobby shrugged away, some of tension left behind by talking to Marcus ebbing away at Sam's shenanigans. "Shuddup, you id'jit."

 

His eyes traveling beyond the tall Winchester, Bobby gazed at the figure currently raiding his fridge for cheese. "You sure this will work?"

 

"My dear man," Balthazar started, straightening up with the spoils of his hunt trapped between two fingers. "Have I ever let any of you down?" Noting the less than trusting looks that the two hunters were throwing his way, the angel took a bite of his cheese, barely hiding his smirk. "Well... yes, I have. I'm aware of that," he said with his mouth full. "But I had to sweat my nuts off to get my hands on that bloody thing. Castiel doesn't really share his toys these days, you know? So, give me some credit here... I'll do my best tomorrow."

 

And with that he was gone.

 

Sitting heavily against the kitchen counter, Sam looked at Bobby from beneath long, shaggy bangs. This sucked, and they both knew it well. The entirety of their plan banked too much on a lot of 'what ifs' and too many unknowns. All it would take was someone making a mistake, someone looking in to their actions too deeply, or Balthazar screwing them over and they would be... well, screwed.

 

Bobby turned the rusty spike, trapped between the pinchers in his hands. He had learned the hard way that holding the damn thing with unprotected fingers hurt as hell. He even had the blisters to prove it.

 

It didn't look like much. Old, but certainly not with the power to command armies into victory. It was just an aged, rusted piece of iron. That burned on contact. "You think he brought us the real thing?" he wondered out loud. Not that his reaction when touching the thing hadn't been impressive and all, but Bobby had been around for too long to be impressed by so little.

 

"I hope so," Sam said, walking to Bobby side and picking up the old nail. Before Bobby could issue a warning, Sam's fingers had brushed against it. Bare skin on iron.

 

Bobby flinched, waiting to smell burned skin.

 

The tingling feeling that cursed through the tip of his fingers when Sam grabbed the Nail made him doubt his own words. It could be just the power of suggestion, he told himself. Or, more likely, hunger. He couldn't really remember the last time he'd eaten. What it didn't do was burn his fingers like it had done to Bobby.

 

Sam looked at the older hunter, confused.

 

"Hey, don't look at me," Bobby said, holding his palms up in surrender. "I ain't touching the damn thing again to make sure... let Marcus himself solve this tie."

 

"We can only assume that he'll have some way of testing it before trying it," Sam went on, dropping the matter. "Make sure that we didn't just pick it up at Wal-mart. Besides, Balthazar seemed pretty sure that the thing didn't do what Marcus believes it to do. If it's able to control anyone, to lead armies into battle, it isn't angels, or Heaven's armies anyway... wouldn't want to test it on humans though."

 

Sam sat the Nail back on the table and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Either way, we need to make sure that Marcus doesn't get to keep this when we're done."

 

The plan was simple enough, for all that was involved.

 

Bobby would go to Marcus to deliver the Holy Nail while Sam sneaked his way into the top floor of the millionaire's house and free Dean.

 

Meanwhile, Bobby would stick around while Marcus summoned himself an angel; Balthazar would answer the call, pretending to be under Marcus control until Sam, Dean and Bobby made their exit.

 

A simple in and out. No sweat.

 

Things in real life, however, never worked quite like that. There was the not-so-small matter of Sam getting inside a heavily guarded perimeter that had more security cameras than most prisons. Also, there was the matter of getting past all the guards that Sam had seen posted at the front and back entry _and_ at every access point inside the house and his brother's room... all without raising the alarm. And most importantly, there was the matter of Dean himself.

 

After more than a week in the hands of that man, there was no telling what condition Dean would be in. Sam had only seen a pair of legs, but the room itself had left him little hope of finding Dean unscathed. It was, after all, Dean they were talking about.

 

Even if Marcus had the best intentions towards the oldest Winchester, Sam knew his brother. He was a pro at getting his captors pissed off.

 

"What I'd like to know is how the hell this Marcus fella managed to angel-proof his entire place," Bobby mused out loud. "It's not like any of the other hunters had access to that particular piece of information. Do you think Balthazar was lying about that?"

 

Sam shook his head. Even his hair felt tired just thinking about all they needed to do still. "The risk is much greater staying in the open and facing Marcus as he has offered to do," he pointed out. "Balthazar protects his own ass above all else. If he truly had a way of zapping in and out of Marcus' mansion undetected, he would use it. Besides," Sam added, sadly. "Marcus has access to the most reliable source of information on angels to get the angel proofing right."

 

"Dean," Bobby finished, the same sad expression in his face. Fat lot of good it had done the older Winchester. All that angels had brought him was pain and heartache. "We'll get him out, Sam," the older man said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself as well. "And that son of a bitch will get his just desserts."

 

 **≪◇≫**

 

When Dean opened his eyes, he was all alone. The warmth of Ben's body, which he had been grasping close to his, was gone. It felt like a piece of him was missing.

 

"Ben?" Dean called out, frantically searching with his eyes, even if it was too dark to see. The emptiness of the room returned his voice, void of answer. Maybe he'd been dreaming. Or having one of those weird spells; perhaps he wasn't even there at all…

 

Dean fumbled through his pockets, searching for a lighter. His hands shook when he finally held one and flicked it open. The light from the tiny flame did little more than deepen the crimson puddle on the floor, a reminder of the many who had died there. But Dean's heart could only fear for the life of one of them…

 

"BEN!" he shouted again, holding on to the faint hope that maybe Ben had gotten better and wandered away. It was a fool's hope, one no more solid than wisps of clouds.

 

"There is no point in calling the boy," a somber voice replied. "Ben is no longer Ben. He is Anniel now."

 

Dean's hand slipped on the blood soaked floor as he tried to turn too fast and meet the person speaking. Helpless to prevent the fall, the side of his face struck the concrete, sending a jolt of pain across his skull. Humiliated and with the blood of others dripping from his face, Dean didn't even bothered looking up to meet the angel's eyes. "What are you doing here? I thought you were dead."

 

He was angry, distraught and in pain, and Castiel… was too late.

 

There was a momentary pause as Castiel tilted his head, a gesture so familiar and yet so unsettlingly human that it sent a shiver through Dean's soul. "You called for me. I came."

 

"I called you…" Dean began evenly, turning his head to look up at the angel, "…to save Ben!" he spat loudly, anger and anguish flashing in his eyes. "Just like I called you to save Lisa and you... never answered. What are you doing here now?"

 

"Ben is safe. Anniel is a good fighter, he will take good care of the boy," Castiel went on, unwavering under Dean's rage. "And Lisa… she's at rest, you need not worry about her fate."

 

"That's bull!" Dean hissed, angry at the tears gathering in his eyes. He had failed them all, screwed up at every turn and chance of keeping them safe. Sam, Lisa, Ben… "Ben was dead! He never gave his consent to be an angel condom!"

 

"The soul is immortal, Dean," Castiel said in a condescending tone. "You, better than anyone, should know that. What Ben refused in life, to obey you, his soul accepted with no hesitation."

 

Dean shook his head. "No…" he couldn't force himself to believe that. He couldn't even imagine Ben out there, fighting battles that were not his to fight, facing death over and over again. "NO! You bring him back right now, or I swear to God I'll—"

 

"You'll do what?" Castiel pressed on, crouching to get closer to Dean. The hem of his ever present trench coat was slowly soaking the redness out of the floor. "There is nothing you can do… you're just a man, Dean."

 

The same odd feeling of before took over Dean. This was not the first time he had heard those words coming from Castiel's lips. It was more than a sense of déjà vu; it felt almost as a second life that Dean couldn't remember living.

 

"Let Ben go, Dean…" Castiel continued, leaning forward and placing a placating hand over the brand on Dean's shoulder. The bran he'd made. "He never belonged to you."

 

Dean wanted to shrug off the touch, wanted to be stubborn and proud, but there was nothing left to be proud about. Ben was all he'd had left and now, he had nothing. He was nothing.

 

When Lisa died and Dean had been left with a sense of guilt so profound and consuming that it was he could think of, Ben had been there to keep him sane.

 

When he was forced to accept the reality that he was paralyzed and would never walk again in his life, Ben was there to keep Dean from drowning in self-pity.

 

Now, Dean was trapped. Utterly alone with his guilt, with his limitations, with his emptiness.

 

The tears that Dean had been fighting since Ben's death –hell!- since Lisa's death, fell freely now. Years of built up pain spilled from his eyes and his chest heaved painfully in attempt to let it all out. The anguish crowding his chest, desperate to be free from his very soul, flooding the room like a broken damn. He had lost so much, given so much…

 

This was all he had now, Dean realized as he lay there, in a dark basement half way across the world, soaked in the blood of his friends and his son, being lectured by the angel that he had once considered a friend, a brother even, but who had done nothing to help those Dean loved. "What am I supposed to do now?" Dean asked, his voice broken with sobs that he could no longer contain. "What am I supposed to do?"

 

"Now, it's time you die, Dean Winchester."

 

 **≪◇≫**

 

There was a faint flutter of wings and then Sam was alone. He looked around and then down, sucking in a breath, his eyes closing in reflex.

Looking down had been a bad idea. That whole plan was a bad idea.

Sam took a deep breath and tried again. Dean might be the one with a thing about airplanes, but Sam hated heights.

And the rooftop of Marcus' house was high. And windy.

Balthazar hadn't stuck around after leaving him on the rooftop, on the west end of the house, as far away as possible from the watchful guards posted at the front gate. The angel had other places he needed to be.

In part, Sam was just glad that they had managed to land at all.

This particular part of their plan had rested heavily on the assumption that the Enochian sigils preventing the angel from going inside the house would not prevent him from landing on the roof with Sam. The thought that, as an alternative, the angel would have to just drop Sam down made nasty things happen to Sam's already churning stomach.

So far, so good though. Except for the part where Sam was still on the roof and looking for a way in. His best bet seemed to be a small window, more of an attic dormer, close to the top of the tower.

Praying that the ledge of ornamented clay would continue to bear his weight, Sam inched forward, slowly toward the small window. Below, he imagined that Bobby would be about to knock on Marcus' front door with the Holy Nail, which gave Sam about half an hour to get to Dean, get him out and meet Bobby at the rendezvous point. Piece of cake.

Grabbing hold of the window with one hand, Sam tested it, hoping that it wasn't locked. The frame rose up smoothly and Sam sighed in relief.

Looking inside, he was pleased to see that the place was used more for storage than anything else. A common attic, because apparently, even bad guys had junk to store.

The window frame itself was a tight fit, but Sam managed to squeeze in, landing on his hands with a muffled groan and a cloud of dust.

Glad to finally have solid ground under his feet, Sam pulled out the gun he had stuck at the back of his jeans and carefully turned the knob on the door. There was a short corridor right in front of the door and what looked like a small flight of stairs down to the main part of the house. At the end of the stairs, Sam could glimpse the shoulder of one of the guards.

Sam checked his watch again. He was on time.

Careful to make his steps as silent as possible, Sam neared the edge of the steps and took aim.

The gun was part of a new stash that, apparently, Dean and soulless-him had been forced to acquire during their short time working for Crowley. Though Dean never talked much about that period -usually only to disperse generous amounts of swearing and cursing at the demon- Sam had gathered that, in order to deliver the alpha-monsters that Crowley had demanded in exchange for Sam's soul, they had taken to using several types of stun guns.

Which now came in handy. Sam pressed the trigger, watching the small dart bury itself on the man's neck, and ran as fast as he could down the steps, catching the falling guard at the last second.

One down, a gazillion to go.

 **≪◇≫**

Bobby walked through the silver gates that gave access to Marcus' property for the second time in less than a week.

While the first time had been filled with doubt and a sense of wasted time, now he strode forward filled with nervous purpose.

They knew where Dean was and they would get him out. Of that, Bobby had no doubts.

A man wearing a white jacket came to open the door after Bobby's third ring. Watching another of Marcus' employees who probably knew nothing about whom his boss really was, the hunter couldn't help but think about that young woman that Marcus had murdered in cold blood because she's been in the wrong place at the wrong time, thanks to him and Sam.

Pushing the thought aside, Bobby stood silently as the man waved an electric device around his arms and legs. A portable X-ray machine, Bobby remembered from the first time he'd been there, meant to detect any hidden weapons on his person.

"This way," the butler said curtly once he was satisfied that Bobby was unarmed. He led him through an impossibly long corridor until they reached the other side of the house. To their left, there was large hall with a staircase spiraling up. To their right, a set of double doors gave way to a spacious room dominated by a long white wall. A round, gaming table covered in red felt and a matching pool table stood in the middle; a few chairs, that looked like no one had ever sat on them, were perfectly aligned at the back of the room in front of a large painting of hunting dogs.

The butler kept on walking, nearing the white wall and reaching out to touch a small button on the right side of the large, empty wall. Bobby watched as the white wall shimmered and turned clear as crystal, allowing him a view to an outside patio. Only them did the man led Bobby through the sliding glass door and outside.

Under a glowing sun, sitting by a iron table and surrounded by well-tended, sculpted bushes, was Marcus.

"Mr. Singer," the other man greeted him with a smile. "I have to say… your phone call made my day. Can I offer you some champagne? I'm celebrating."

Bobby resisted the urge to stare at the man's hands and see if there was blood staining them. Reminding himself that he was there to rescue Dean and not set justice to the world, Bobby looked at the table instead. The bottle of cold, sweet wine was sweating in the sun, fat drops of water sliding down its long neck. Tempting as it was to refresh his parched throat, Bobby wasn't about to accept anything coming from that man's hands. He'd learned his lesson with the African dream root that had nearly killed him.

Closer to Marcus stood an open laptop, the screen turned away from Bobby. Beside the computer there was a black bowl surrounded by four, short, red candles.

The large bowl filled with aromatic herbs could be taken as nothing but decorative by most people looking at it. As a hunter, Bobby knew better.

He could see the rosemary, wormwood; smelled the hyssop somewhere in there too. Those were enough for Bobby to know that the mix was meant to be used in a summoning ritual. He could only assume that Marcus was going to use that to make himself an angel-phone call.

"It was faster than I'd thought," Bobby said as a way of greeting the other man, taking a sit in front of him. The chairs were made of metal, iron like the table, and the sun had managed to heat them enough to make Bobby shift uncomfortably as he sat.

Veering his attention from the scalding seat to the items displayed in front of him, Bobby almost chuckled as he saw the symbols drawn on the table, under the bowl.

Bobby would be extremely surprised if _that_ set of symbols managed to call any sort of angel. Clearly, the hunters that Marcus had hired were a bunch of idiots.

The symbols were in ancient Hebrew.

It was obvious that, whoever the brilliant mind behind the writing had been, they'd just assumed that Earth geography and Bible history were of any actual consequence to real angels.

Granted, in the very first summoning ritual that Bobby had made that involved an angel, he had used Latin. But then again, at the time, he had no idea that the thing after Dean had been a winged being, so he'd just gone with the most broad spectrum summoning he could think of.

It was only later, and because Castiel had told them so, that Bobby had started using Enochian for everything angel-related.

There was no way for other hunters to know that, Bobby realized. And there was no way that summoning would get Marcus anything other than a nice smell.

"Can I see it?" Marcus asked, hand extended in Bobby's direction like an eager child asking for candy.

Bobby reached inside his jacket and pulled the linen cloth he had used to wrap the rusty nail, handing it over. He waited for any kind of physical reaction from the other man as he grabbed the nail with his bare hands.

However, like Sam, Marcus seemed impervious to the burning effects of the nail. Rather than piss him off, the surprising fact left Bobby wondering about what this man and Sam could have in common that he did not.

Marcus picked it up with a reverence that Bobby was sure to have little to none religious sentiment. No, there was something more dangerous glinting in Marcus' eyes as he held the ancient artifact and it had nothing whatsoever to do with any spiritual pursuit.

"You don't mind if I test it first, do you?" Marcus asked.

Bobby nodded, even though he was aware that his consent carried no real weight. He sat back, aiming to look relaxed and waited. He was sure that Marcus would pull up some elaborate machine to test how old that Nail was or call in some expert to look at it. Instead, the other man pulled out a small bottle of peroxide from his pocket.

It was rather anticlimactic.

"Peroxide?" Bobby found himself asking.

Marcus smirked. "The composition of iron in Israel, the ancient territory the Romans called Judea, was crap. Every piece of iron used by the occupying Romans was shipped from the north of Europe, from the mines in Germania mostly," he explained, pouring a few drops of the peroxide over the Nail. "German iron, because it had high concentrations of phosphorous in its composition, was a favorite of the Romans."

Bobby watched the Nail intently as Marcus picked it up and turned it in the sunlight. Small flecks of light glinted off, hidden beneath the rust. "The Greeks had a funny name for this mineral," Marcus went on, apparently satisfied with the metal's reaction. "They called it Lucifer...' _The light bringer_ '. Ironic, isn't?"

Bobby stopped himself from making any sort of comment, silently thanking Balthazar for bringing them, at least, the right type of metal nail. "Our deal?" Bobby inquired, looking nervously around. It hadn't escaped his attention that two armed guards had replaced the butler.

The look that Marcus gave him made Bobby actually fear for his life. Demons and other monsters, the older hunter knew how to gauge their actions. It was a risky game but one that Bobby played without fear because the rules never changed and everyone played by them.

This guy... he wasn't exactly one of the things that Bobby was used to hunt, but there was no human connection behind those brown eyes either; no sympathy for a fellow human, no empathy for the living. In a way that frightened Bobby more than he would have cared to admit, Marcus reminded him of Sam, back when he was minus a soul.

"You seem very eager to be in the presence of a being that you claim to hate," Marcus said, drying the Nail carefully and putting it in his pocket.

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "I'm a curious man... and I have to say, I'm mighty curious to know what do you intend to do with that."

The other man smiled. "I guarantee you front row, Mr. Singer. Front row."

Bobby settled back on his chair. Inside, he wanted nothing more than to take this chance and get as far away from that psychopath as he could. However, Bobby's part in the plan involved him sticking around for a little bit longer. "Let's see them angels then," he said resolute.

Marcus worked like an amateur. He mixed the herbs using his hands, instead of swirling the bowl around and he lit the candles in the wrong order. Still, when he threw the lit matchstick in to the bowl and the herbs ignited in a powerful blue flame, Bobby held his breath. Angels would not answer that summoning, but lord knows what would. He hoped that Balthazar was somewhere close by where he could see them, or else the angel would never get his cue to come in.

Five minutes passed of Bobby waiting and Marcus looking bored. "Enough of this," he said, sounding like a petulant child. "It was worth a shot, though."

When he pressed a button on the opened laptop, Bobby frowned. Was he trying to call an angel... by e-mail?

"Quite a feat, isn't it?" Marcus said, turning the screen around so that Bobby could see.

Even looking at it, Bobby had no idea what he was seeing. It was nothing but a series of squiggly lines, oscillating in gentle waves up and down.

Bobby was about to give in to curiosity and just ask what the hell was that when the computer screen cracked. A powerful, shrilling sound followed.

Hastily covering his ears, Bobby was pleased to see the slight touch of fear in Marcus' eyes. It was good to know that there was something human underneath that.

"You called?" Balthazar's accented voice sounded. He looked around, as if he was expecting to find someone else. "You're not Dean."

Marcus blinked, apparently not quite believing that whatever it was he had used, had worked. "No, I'm not," he finally managed to say. "And you're not Castiel."

"Brilliant deduction," Balthazar said, managing to sound annoyed and nonchalant at the same time. "Now that we've establish who we're not, I think I have more important things to attend to. Like watching paint slowly dry."

"The call was for Castiel," Marcus went on, ignoring the dismissive tone of the angel. "Why hasn't he answered?"

"The 'call' was made by Dean Winchester," Balthazar replied, his whining tone mockingly similar to Marcus'. "Why isn't _he_ here? Castiel was busy; he sent me in his stead. Which, by the way, was a huge waste of my precious time," Balthazar said all in one go, getting ready to leave. "Not to mention the fact that you blared so loud that who knows who else might be coming to party, a good enough reason for me to not stick around," he added, with a pointed look at Bobby, enough for the older man to know that that last part was, at least, true.

Listening to them talk, it finally clicked in Bobby's head what those wavy lines on Marcus' computer had been.

Dean's brain waves.

The bastard had somehow conned Dean into calling Castiel, recorded it and actually managed to broadcast them at will. It was ingenious... in an unbelievably evil kind of way.

Marcus figured that the wrong angel was better than no angel at all. "Wait! I command you to stay," he said, voice uncertain, as if he wasn't all that sure that this would work.

The guards were there, Bobby realized, for the event the angel decided to turn on Marcus, not because of him. That rich idiot really thought that a bunch of armed gorillas would be able to do anything against an angel if he decided to get angry or the Holy Nail failed to work. Bobby could almost feel pity for the man.

The smears of red near each of the security men made Bobby rethink his judgment. Looking closer, Bobby was almost certain that those were angel banishing sigils, just waiting to be used.

Maybe not such a complete idiot after all.

Balthazar smirked for one second, before his whole expression fell as he closed his eyes and opened them, a breath later, to find himself still in the same place. "How the bloody hell are you doing that?" he asked, outrage.

Marcus smiled in triumph, pulling the rusty nail from his pocket, a magician reveling his trick.

Balthazar could've been an actor, so good he was at feigning his shocked surprise. "How did you get one of those? We... none should've remained on Earth."

"Well, I tip my hat to you," Bobby cut in, before Balthazar took his acting too far. "You've managed to flabbergast one of them into babbling."

"You can further impress," Marcus answered, eyeing Balthazar, "by killing him," he added with a nod towards Bobby.

"What?"

"What?"

Bobby and Balthazar shouted nearly in unison. Each looked more surprised than the other.

"Well, I do require proof that this angel is truly under my dominion," Marcus said. Anyone hearing him would say that his reasons were the most understandable in the whole wide world. "And my plans aren't really of the sharing type. All of my employees, except for a few selected security guards, have already been taken care of. Which leaves you, Mr. Singer... like any that has knowledge of what I'm doing here, I can't let you go."

"Why the hell not?" Bobby asked, trying to weigh his chances of out running the guards' bullets and an angel. What kind of person killed his whole staff to keep a secret?

Marcus gave him a look. "Do you really think I don't know the real reason why you are here, Mr. Singer? That I'm not aware that, somewhere in my property, Sam Winchester is trying to find his brother in this very moment?"

It wasn't all that hard for Bobby to pretend to be surprised this time around. He had hoped that the man wouldn't make the connection, but truly, that was just wishful thinking. If Marcus had collected from Dean's mind the knowledge that Bobby was Dean's friend and that Sam was alive, the fact that they would do anything for that boy was obvious.

Fortunately, Marcus seemed under the impression that they still had no clue where Dean was.

"Don't worry... my guards will find him soon, but you won't be around to see him die," Marcus said, managing to sound like he was doing a favor to Bobby.

"Let me get this straight," Balthazar interrupted. "You want me to kill the old man to prove that the nail truly works, correct?" At Marcus impatient nod, the angel went on. "What makes you think that I give a fuck about the old fart? Killing him proves absolutely nothing."

"The fact that you're stalling tells me that you do care," Marcus countered. "Now, kill him!"

"Very well," Balthazar simply said with a shrug. With a faint rustle of wings, he was standing right next to Bobby. He reached out a finger and touched the older man's chest, blinking him out of existence.

 

 **≪◇≫**

 

Castiel looked down on Dean with what could only be described as pity in his eyes. "You failed, Dean… in everything that you've set yourself to do. You failed at stopping Lucifer; you failed at saving Sam… you failed as a son, as a brother, as a husband and as a father."

Each word coming from Castiel's mouth felt like a slap in Dean's soul. It did not matter who said it; Dean knew he was right, he had known it for a very long time. Still on the floor, Dean curled in on himself, his side pressing against the unnaturally warm concrete. He wanted nothing more than to disappear from existence, to make himself small enough and blend with the rest of the debris scattered around him. Anything to make Castiel from voicing what Dean already knew.

"The only thing you are good at," Castiel went on, "is killing, Dean. Even the ones you love, they don't stand much of a chance of surviving. You do nothing but surround yourself with death."

Dean sobbed, grabbing his useless legs. "Shut up… please shut up…"

"Have you ever wondered, Dean, why Death seems so amused by your presence? Why such a powerful Horsemen would bother to give in to any of your requests?" Castiel asked, sounding entertained by the answer he was about to give. "He sees you as an apprentice, Dean… he sees you as Death."

"Please, just... go away," Dean mumbled, not wanting to face the angel's eyes. He knew he would only find contempt and disappointment in them.

"He's coming, Dean," Castiel whispered, his voice taking in a comforting tone. "It will be over soon. You will be free." And then he was gone in a mad whirl of feathers.

Dean looked up, startled. Who was coming? Death?

And then Dean remembered, all those times when he had felt like someone was watching him, chasing him. Someone who looked like Sam.

But those had been dreams, hallucinations, whatever weird fruit his mind had decided to haunt him with, Dean was sure of that.

Something moved at the edge of his vision and Dean twisted around. All around him, the darkness seemed to close in, growing and devouring the light. In only seconds, it became impossible to see more than two feet in any direction.

Fumbling with the lighter one more time, Dean aimed the flickering light to the far side of the room. The broken faces of smashed statues and the upturned metal skeletons of the broken shelves stared back at him, laden with momentous gravitas, like they too were waiting for something to happen.

A shadow raced through the ceiling, fast moving and too big for it to be a rat. Looking down, all Dean could see was debris.

Either the broken statues had moved, or Dean was imagining it.

How could he be sure of what was real and what was a dream? His life seemed to skip beats, like a scratched record and he had to wonder: where did reality reside? In the moments he remembered… or the skipped bits when the needle hit nothing but empty air in that scratched record?

Dean knew he remembered things that had never happened, in the same way he had forgotten others that he was sure he should remember.

Why couldn't he remember a single day after coming out of the hospital? Why did he feel Castiel was right, that he and Death were far too well acquainted, so much so that Dean felt like he had walked in Death's shoes at least once?

It made no sense.

And yet, there were things that left room for no confusion or doubt. Dean was alone and the impending feeling of doom refused to leave him.

He had lost everything, everyone he once loved. Dean knew that, in another life, whatever was coming for him wouldn't frighten him. In fact, he would welcome it.

But that wasn't the case. There was something that he was supposed to do, something too important to leave hanging. Something that Dean could not abandon.

The only thing that Dean did not know was whether that was something that he was supposed to do in this life or that other one that seemed to haunt his every breath, like a shadow that shifted in the light.

Dean figured that it wouldn't make much difference. He felt no pain, but he could see the pool of blood growing larger and larger underneath his broken leg. No one would arrive at the archives until morning and, by then, Dean was sure that he would be nothing more than another corpse to add to the mess that they would leave behind.

The faint growl of a car engine was the last thing that Dean thought he'd hear down there. Sweaty fingers flickered the lighter on, sliding off the ignition and producing nothing but white sparkles as it failed to ignite.

Dean cursed as he lost his grip on the lighter and heard it tumbling to the floor. In the darkness that followed, the squeaking noise of a car door opening and then being slummed shut preceded loud footsteps.

Unhurried. Certain of their direction, even in the most complete dark.

"Hi, Dean," a familiar voice whispered from the darkness. "No more running now. Now you finally die, brother."

 **≪◇≫**

Marcus could barely hide his exhilaration. Granted, the lean man with a British accent was hardly what he had envisioned an angel would look like, but the whole concept of using vessels meant that it would be hard for him to see an angel's true form. He wondered if the accent was due to the vessel or a preference of the angel himself.

Still, it was the first time that Marcus had ever been in the presence of such a powerful being, one that was at his command and the feeling was more intoxicating than he had anticipated.

The poisoned champagne he'd used to kill the scientists and house staff would've been too easy, but Singer had not touched it. Rather than just order one of his guards to shoot the man and, once he was found, Sam as well, Marcus realized that with such an unstoppable power at his reach, he couldn't stop himself. He wanted to see an angel smite someone.

Bobby was just handy.

To be honest, Marcus had imagined something a little more spectacular than just a disappearing body, but the persuasiveness of the action spoke for itself. One second the man was there, the next he was gone. Forever. Atoms scattered through the Universe.

It was time to move on to final step of his plan, the one that Marcus had worked so hard to achieve. "Very good," he said, looking the strange looking angel in the eyes. "Now, I want you to abandon your current vessel and use me instead. Given time, we might even learn to work as a team, but for now, I have no choice but to take over a—"

"Wha-? Stop talking, little man!" Balthazar said, one hand raised and his eyebrows trying to escape into his hairline. "Have you lost what little mind you have left?"

Marcus fascination for angels was quickly disappearing every time this one talked. Maybe Dean had figured them right, maybe all of them were dicks. He exchanged a quick look with his head of security, content to see that the man's hand was already poised and ready, hovering above the nearest banishing sigil. Just in case...

"Not every one of you dancing monkeys can be a vessel, you dimwit," Balthazar went on. "You need to be of certain—"

"Bloodlines, yes, I'm aware of all that," Marcus said, talking over the angel. "I wasn't asking for your opinion, I was commanding you to do it," he said dryly.

Balthazar gave him a long look, long enough that Marcus found himself grasping the Holy Nail tighter. What if it had all been an act? What if he had been wrong about the strength of the relic? What if—

"You're altered yourself," Balthazar said after a while, his scrutiny apparently having revealed more than Marcus was willing to share. "You sneaky bastard!" the angel said with an amused smile. "You actually mixed yourself with Dean Winchester's essence to become a vessel... kinky!"

Reading the impatient look that Marcus was sure to be all over his face, the angel dropped the humor and turned serious for a moment. "I can't really say no to you," he started, stating the obvious. "But you should be aware that whatever concoction you invented to make yourself suitable for being an angel vessel... it won't work. It works for small things, like grabbing that Holy Nail without burning your fingers off, but on something like me? Not so much."

"And I'm supposed to believe your word on it," Marcus said in return. "Against the opinion of some of the best geneticist of this country?"

"Genetic therapy?" Balthazar said with an impressed whistle. "Good start... but it takes a wee bit more than a few physical bits and bobs. It's a complicated union that requires something more spiritual than what you can find inside any test tu—"

"Enough of this nonsense!" Marcus let out like a petulant child that had waited too long for a piece of candy. "I knew you would try some sort of trick to weasel your way out of this union, so you might as well give up now, because I won't believe a word from your mouth. Obey me!"

Balthazar shrugged, like it really was no skin off his nose. "FYI, you better do something about those angelic protection sigils your house is covered in, at least until we move this party inside," the angel added with a disgusted look on his face. "I really don't think you want to be standing out here like a dick when the others arrive."

"Others?"

The eye-roll was not very angelic but it conveyed Balthazar's feelings quite effectively. "That 'call' you made... it came across so loudly in the angelic wave-lengths that I'm sure every angel in creation heard it... and that includes a couple ones who aren't in the Dean Winchester fan club," the angel went on, wording his explanation as if he was talking to particularly thick person. "As in, they want him dead... and if Raphael shows up, he won't stop long enough to check if you're him or not."

That Marcus actually paid attention to. He hadn't thought that far ahead, but it made sense that once he became an angel, he would be affected by the same spells and protections that he had used to keep Dean hidden and untouchable. Also, from what he had gathered from Dean's memories, Raphael was not a force that he would want to reckon with.

"Alex," Marcus called out to one of the security men guarding the yard. "Take Fred and the others and take care of it. After we go inside, I want to do redo them, are we clear?"

With his back turned, Marcus and his men missed the brief smile that spread across Balthazar's lips.

"So, we're doing this or what?" Marcus asked, turning his attention back to the angel.

Balthazar nodded, taking a seat by the table. "You might want to close your eyes for this part," the angel warned.

After that, Marcus was lost in a pool of whiteness.

   
 **≪◇≫  
**

 

When Dean opened his eyes next, he knew he was no longer in that dark and blood-filled basement. For one, the smell was too clean and antiseptic; and there was so much light in this new place that it burned Dean’s eyes and shot daggers of pain into his brain.  
   
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Dean was sure that he was dead, once again trapped inside his own coffin.  
   
Trying to use hands that felt like they were encased in cement, Dean rolled over the flat surface where he lay, and immediately regretted it. The motion seemed to set off a cacophony of high-pitched noises, firing left and right and bouncing off the walls like rubber balls. His head felt like it was going to crack under the onslaught of sound.  
   
His back was on fire, the same electric jolts that he had felt before, only this time they were twice as painful, thrice as long. Dean pulled away from the world around him like a hurt animal, curling on himself. The movement pulled at something in his back and the pain only grew worse.  
   
The place where he was laying was too small for such aerobics; there was a brief feeling of weightlessness followed by an unforgiving landing on the floor. A sudden, intense flash of pain smashed through his lower body; it felt, at the same time, like a kick to his lower back and groin. It knocked the wind from his lungs and Dean wiggled on the hard floor with a pained wheeze; even the strength to scream had abandoned him.  
   
The floor was cold as ice, and yet, it burned through Dean’s sensitive skin like fire. He wanted to roll away, to push away, but none of his limbs seemed to be in the mood to obey him.  
   
Dean faintly registered his surroundings. The smell of blood and urine in the air; the discarded medical equipment that had joined him on the floor; the bodies lying around.  
   
They were all strangers, unfamiliar faces that Dean couldn’t remember seeing in life. And they were all dead, trashed dolls abandoned on the floor.  
   
Dean had no idea what had happened in that place. The only thing he could remember was that Ben was gone and that someone was coming for him; that someone wanted Dean dead as well. If he wanted to help Ben, if he wanted to set the boy free, Dean needed to escape the shadow that was pursuing him and find his son.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Sam peered down the second corridor, hoping that, like the rest of the house, there was only one guard per floor. If Marcus had doubled security in the meantime and a second guard had seen his partner go down… all would be lost.  
   
The corridor was blissfully empty.  
   
Not bothering to go around the long way, through the stairs, Sam jumped the railing and let himself hang from the wooden structure. The room where he had heard Dean was directly below him; all Sam needed to do was swing and land on the floor directly beneath.  
   
His sneakers landed with a soft thud and Sam immediately dropped to a crouch. He stilled and listened, waiting for any signs of a raised alarm; the only thing Sam could hear was the faint sound of heavy footfalls, a cadence of steps that screamed of simultaneous boredom and alertness, drawing nearer. One of the guards, making his rounds on the floor beneath Sam.  
   
Downstairs, he imagined that Bobby was already talking to Marcus and that Balthazar was waiting for his cue.  
   
Looking at the empty stairs at the end of the corridor, Sam couldn’t help but remember what had happened there before. In the few quiet times he’d had since, Sam had gone over and over his actions, thinking of how he could have stopped Brenda from being killed. Then and now, he’d always come to the same conclusion; he had kidnapped an innocent person and she had died.  
   
Brenda’s death was, sadly, only one more in the list of dark marks on Sam’s soul. He wondered if there were any clean spots remaining.  
   
Distracted by his guilt, Sam almost tripped over the body lying on the floor. Startled, Sam had his gun raised and aimed at the man’s neck even as his eyes registered the fact that it was one of Marcus’ guards and that he was already out. Dropping to his knee, Sam pressed two fingers to the man’s neck. Dead.  
   
“What t’hell—“  
   
A few feet away, in the doorway of that Sam knew to lead into Dean’s room, he saw yet another arm, limp against the floor.  
   
“Dean…” Sam breathed in a panicked whisper. On his feet, he abandoned all thoughts of stealth, and raced headlong in to the room, his heart hammering against his chest in a desperate staccato that seemed to spell in Morse code ‘Dean’s in trouble’.  
   
“Oh…Jesus,” Sam gagged and quickly buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow as soon as he stepped inside. The smell of urine assaulted his senses; so strong it made his eyes water and he fought the urge to throw up.  
   
Eyes scanning the room, his shoulders slumped; the room was empty. Not that it was exactly empty; there were bodies everywhere, but none of them was Dean.  
   
Two men in lab coats, one sprawled over a table, and the other sitting against one of the machines, lay unconscious or dead; Sam had no way to tell which.  
   
The room itself was the pure image of chaos, like a small nuke had exploded in there. The only things left in place were those either bolted to the floor or the walls. Papers lay scattered all over the floor, broken glass glinting from one of the corners, overturned chairs and equipment piled in heaps of rubble. Bottles of expensive Champagne, looking oddly out of place in that room, were scattered randomly, most of them empty, like a big party had been interrupted just minutes before. Closer to the metallic table that took center stage, Sam could see the torn ending of two IV lines and a urine bag, catheter discarded and open, leaking all over the floor.  
   
That would account for the smell.  
   
Stepping over the guard’s body at the door, Sam did a quick check of the men in white coats. They were dead, tall glasses discarded by their hands. Sam picked one up and sniffed it. It smelled of nothing but Champagne, but Sam doubted that was all that was in those bottles. The guard by the door, a balding man with the skinniest of faces, was beginning to stir.  
   
The pulled off IVs, the medical equipment smashed in anger…none of that added up with the poisoned medical staff and the dead guard outside. If Sam didn’t know better, it seemed like someone was cleaning the house up, erasing all traces of what had happened there. God... what if Dean...  
   
No. Dean was alive, Sam was sure of it. The target for the poisoned bottles seemed to be the scientists; and yet someone had killed that guard outside.  
   
Sam only needed to find his brother in the –he looked at his watch again- next five minutes; in the middle of a house the size of two football fields and crawling with security people who would shoot him on sight and sneak him out past all the remaining guards.  
   
Sam felt like smacking his head against the wall in frustration. Instead, he decided to smack the face of the guard, the one clutching his arm to his side, leaning against the door frame, desperately looking for his gun. The man’s head, like a soft ball, banged against the machine and dropped to his chest. “Where is he?” Sam spat through clenched teeth.  
   
The man looked up, bleary-eyed, still struggling to decide what was up and down, eyes struggling to focus on his newest attacker.  
   
Sam shook him for good measure. The motion made the man look even greener around the gills but Sam didn’t really care about that. This was a person who had stood by and done nothing while Dean was held prisoner for over a week, doing to him things that Sam could not and would not think about just yet… the wellbeing of this ‘person’, -and Sam using the term loosely even in his mind- was the least of Sam’s concerns.  
   
“Here the hell is my brother?” Sam insisted, giving the man another shake.  
   
The man coughed, decorating Sam’s shirt with speckles of blood. His teeth were staining red when he pulled his lips back, drawing a pained breath. “Who?... I don… I don’t kno—“  
   
“WHERE IS HE?” Sam yelled, resisting the urge to add more bruises to the man’s already broken face.  
   
The man tried to curl up on himself, but Sam’s grip, hands’ full of his black shirt, didn’t allow him much room to wiggle.  
   
“I… I… I didn’t see… I swear,” the man stuttered, looking around as if fearing that whomever had beaten him unconscious would come back to finish the job. “He a—attacked me… he wanted to know where the kid was... he’s fucking insane!”  
   
Sam had to reign in his desire to end that man’s misery right there and then. Maybe he was talking about someone else; maybe Sam was wrong and it hadn’t been Dean who had done this.  
Because, surely, this man couldn’t be calling his brother insane for beating the crap out of his captors after a week of being kept in that room, like some animal for study.  
   
“Where did he go?”  
   
Sam realized he was talking to himself. The man had slipped back into unconsciousness in between one rattle and the next.  
   
Discarding the guard on the dirty floor like the piece of human trash that he was, Sam looked around, searching for someone else to answer his questions.  
   
Sam looked at his watch again; he needed to hurry or they would miss their opening.  
   
There was no way of knowing for how long Bobby and Balthazar could keep Marcus entertained and the guards’ attention on them rather than inside the house.  
   
But this was one gargantuan house and Sam couldn’t even venture a guess as to where Dean might’ve gone after leaving that room. Logic told him that Dean would have tried to make a run for the door, that escape would have been his first thought.  
   
But the scientist had mentioned a kid. Dean was looking for some kid and Sam knew that, no matter how bad the shape Dean was in, he would chose his own safety over leaving behind _any_ kid in need of rescue.  
   
The identity of the kid was a mystery in itself; as far as Sam was aware, the only kid in Dean’s life at the moment was Ben. But Dean had left Lisa and Ben behind; their memories wiped clean, both of them severed from his life in the most painful of ways. Had Marcus grabbed Ben as well as Dean, without them realizing it? Or was this some other poor child that this guy had abducted?  
   
The monitors on one corner of the room that had been left somewhat unscathed called to Sam’s attention. If the men working there had been collecting some form of data on his brother – a thought that gave Sam shivers- maybe Sam could find in there at least a direction to start his search.  
   
Sam pushed a dead scientist from the swiveling chair where he’d died in and sat himself. The three flat screen monitors were lined side by side, all three running the same variations of a forest-themed screensaver. Quickly pressing a random key on each of the digital keyboards that seemed to be a part of the table itself, Sam looked at the revealed images with a puzzled look.  
   
Leaning in, he stared hard at the data, struggling to make any sense of the meaning behind the first two monitors. Sam could vaguely assume that the scribbles running top to bottom of the screen were some kind of programming code, but even that was a bit too much of knowledge acquired through watching movies like the ‘The Matrix’ rather than actual understanding. The last screen, however, was thankfully very simple to get.  
   
It was a freeze frame image, a video stopped at random, showing a dark room. At first, Sam thought that it some kind of surveillance tape, a hidden camera tapping what happened inside that room. With a sick feeling growing inside his stomach, knowing for certain that he would not like what that recording would show him, Sam rewound and hit play. He quickly realized that what he was seeing was much more horrible than anything he could’ve imagined.  
   
Sam couldn’t recognize the place, and the colors were off, like an over-exposed film, but he was sure that it wasn’t _that_ room. In the almost complete darkness, the floor and the walls glinted, like wet paint, and there were broken pieces of statues and scattered folders everywhere.  
   
The shooting angles were weird, like someone was holding the camera only inches away from the floor; it was clearly no surveillance camera that Sam had ever seen.  
   
There was a voice speaking in the background. Sam knew it was his brother’s voice, even if the broken tone was one that he had seldom heard coming from Dean’s mouth. The ‘camera’ rotated randomly, like someone taking in his surroundings and with a heaviness setting in his stomach, Sam realized that the ‘camera’ was actually Dean’s perspective. Whatever this was, he was seeing it through Dean’s eyes.  
   
Sam’s brain was filled with so much information that he couldn’t even begin to process what he was seeing. He gasped out loud, unable to help himself.  
   
The glinting on the floor and walls was blood. It coated everything in red, like a slaughterhouse in a Tarantino movie.  
   
There were bodies on the floor, or at least, parts of them. Sam couldn’t be sure, but one of the dead bodies looked like a teacher he and Dean had had in high school and the other looked like a woman who used to look after them when they were staying at Pastor Jim’s.  
   
The worst was the broken body lying on Dean’s lap. Sam realized with a pang that he was seeing Ben. Only, it wasn’t Ben as he remembered seeing the kid the last time, baby fat still decorating his cheeks. That was an older Ben, maybe three or four years older.  
   
From the amount of guts hanging on the outside rather than inside the kid, it was easy to see that _that_ Ben was dead.  
   
Sam looked around the room once again. A veil had been pulled from his eyes and he could now guess the purpose of some of those machines. Whatever the hell Marcus had been trying to pull out of Dean’s mind, he had been using something similar to the Djinn’s poison, creating a sort of virtual reality where Dean was stuck in a bloody room and where...  
   
A bright light flooded the frame on the still running computer screen, making Sam close his eyes for a second. Even behind his closed lids he could see the mangled body of the kid Dean saw as a son. Wherever Dean had run to, Sam feared for his brother’s state of mind.  
   
A single one word uttered on the screen made Sam look at it again. ‘Dean’ was spoken in that simultaneously patient and inpatient tone that Castiel used with them so many times.  
   
The things that the Castiel in that dream-reality was saying to his brother were breaking Sam’s heart in this one.  
   
 _“You failed, Dean… in everything that you’ve set yourself to do. You failed at stopping Lucifer, you failed at saving Sam… you failed as a son, as a brother, as a husband and as a father.”_  
   
What scared Sam the most was not the fact that Castiel was saying that to Dean in some made up world were everything seemed set to push his brother down; no, what scared Sam the most was the fact that Dean believed those words with all of his heart. Because, deep down, Sam knew that was exactly as Dean saw himself.  
   
Sam forced himself to watch the tape until it reached the same freeze frame that he had initially discovered. The end was frizzed out, like someone had cut the recording too suddenly and choppy, distorted voices sounding in the background.  
   
Running a hand through his messy hair, Sam looked around, begging the chaos to give him a clue. He got up, walking over cooling corpses until he reached the door. Outside, everything was still as empty and silent as before. Silent as a tomb, he realized with a chill. His eyes landed on a set of narrow stairs at the end of the corridor, disappearing up the tower.  
   
There had been a set of stairs in the dream-reality as well; Sam remembered seeing those, leading up, away from that bloody room. For some reason that Sam couldn’t understand, the Dean in that world had made no effort to climb those stairs, just laying there, looking longingly at them.  
   
Dean had been pushed from that make-believe world and thrown into to reality so suddenly that Sam wasn’t sure how aware he would’ve been of the change. In the dream world, he was demanding that Castiel gave Ben back to him. In here, now, Sam was almost certain that Dean was still looking for Ben.  
   
Sam looked at the narrow stairway. He knew exactly where he would find his brother.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
It didn’t register on Dean’s brain that he was running up the stairs until he had to stop to catch his breath.  
   
Startled by the realization, Dean looked down. His legs... his legs were working.  
   
The realization brought such a tidal wave of emotion that it robbed Dean of all his strength and sent him almost crashing down the steps. With a hand supporting most of his weight against the wall, Dean reached out and tentatively touched his pajamas clad leg. Instead of rubber, he could feel strong muscle, tempered and healthy. It clenched and stretched at his command, following the movements of Dean’s foot without a moment’s hesitation.  
   
He took a deep breath, feeling the air shaking inside his chest and shivering as it passed his throat. This was a dream; it could only be a dream. Or one of those vivid hallucinations that had been plaguing his life more and more of late.  
   
The thing that was after him was trying to lure Dean into a sense of happiness, of security so that it could catch him unaware and rob him of his chance to save Ben.  
   
Dean forced himself to give no importance to the fact that, after four years trapped in a wheelchair, he could finally use his legs again.  
   
Trusting that this was all part of the same illusion, Dean climbed the rest of the steps, giving no thought to the fact that his muscles should be atrophied and not able to sustain his weight, much less take the effort of running up a set of stairs.  
   
Dean stopped only when he reached the top, dizzy from the curling shape of the steps. He found himself standing outside, not in the same archive room where he and the others had arrived, but on a balcony facing a group of trees and a green field that ran as far as the eye could see. It looked like a country house, big as no one built them anymore, with two towers on each end of the structure. The one he’d just came out of glinted blue against the clear sky.  
   
Grabbing on to the ledge, Dean pulled in a deep breath; it felt like it was the first time his lungs worked in a very long time. There was a faint promise of rain in the air and Dean felt as light and alive as he hadn’t in far too long. As far as hallucinations went, this one was surpassing itself.  
   
The gust of fresh air caressed his skin and prickled his hair. Confused, Dean ran a hand over his head and down across his jaw. His hair had been short just minutes ago and he was pretty sure that he had shaved that morning. He had no idea from where the slightly shaggy hair and the weeklong beard had suddenly come from.  
   
Relegating those findings as of lesser importance, Dean looked around. On the opposite side of the green field, there was a brown and grey chasm.  
   
Trying to situate himself, Dean walked the length of the roof and leaned over the short balcony on the other side, taking in the view. The whirling feeling of how high he stood and what he saw down there almost sent him over the edge.  
   
There were bodies down there. Pieces of bodies, at least.  
   
It was impossible to know how many or even if they used to be men or women. Dean could only see grey rocks stained in red and the birds, feeding.  
   
Bile rose in his throat and Dean turned to the side, letting mostly spit and a white goo out. What was that place?  
   
It was clear that he wasn’t at the Vatican. From what Dean remembered from pictures, the small country inside the city of Rome was neither at the edge of a cliff, nor was it known for its pits of dead people.  
   
Dean could think of only one place that fit that bill. He remembered all too well the holes of flesh and blood down there, in the Pit. It was the place where he disposed of the ‘leftovers’ once he was done torturing each soul on the rack; it was the place where he always ‘woke up’ after each session with Alastair.  
   
Hell.  
   
Maybe he had truly died and had been thrown back into Hell. Maybe that was what that thing wearing Sam’s face had come to do; drag him back to join his brother. Maybe it really was Sam...  
   
“Dean!”  
   
Dean spun around, startled. The voice was so familiar, so longed for, so sorely missed. But Dean would not let that fool him. _He_ had finally caught up to him.  
   
The smile in Sam’s face was jarring, like it was really Dean’s brother standing there in the sun, happy to see him.  
   
Dean didn’t gave him a chance to open his mouth and defile Sam’s memory even further by using his voice.  
   
He simply attacked.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Sam could hardly believe his luck when he reached the top of the stairs and found himself staring at his brother. “Dean!”  
   
The man who looked back and stared at Sam was not a version of Dean that Sam remembered ever seeing. Physically, it was still his brother, even if a little ragged around the edges and with hair longer than Sam had ever seen on Dean’s usually cropped style. But the look in his eyes...  
   
After Dean’s return from Hell, Sam had caught glimpses of that look on occasion and it had always scared the crap out of him. The dozens of mornings when he had woken to Dean’s bitten gasps, the nights he would passed out from too much drinking and when lucidity and dreamland mingled in the blink of an eye, Sam had seen the same emotions in Dean’s eyes.  
   
Lost.  
   
Feral.  
   
Cornered.  
   
It was that experience that had Sam bracing his feet. He patted the air in front of him, trying to stop the inevitable. “Wait… Dean.”  
   
It did him no good; Dean lunged at him.  
   
“Dean! Stop!” Sam shouted as Dean swung. “It’s me!” he finished, ducking beneath a well-aimed blow.  
   
It was useless.  
   
There was a gun in Dean’s hand, probably taken from one of the guards he’d attacked, but Dean seemed to have forgotten what a gun was for, something that Sam was very grateful for.  
Dean’s fighting moves were as familiar to Sam as his own. A lifetime of sparring against each other made them better fighters than most, but it also meant that they could predict each other’s move in an almost precognitive way.  
   
But this wasn’t Dean fighting as he had his whole life. This was a trapped animal snarling and swinging, lashing out, hands curled into claws, swiping the air and occasionally skin. Mouth drawn up into an aggressive sneer, Dean moved fast and hard, relentless in his pursuit. It was clear, his aim was to maim and kill and nothing less.  
   
“Dean, come on,” Sam persisted, feeling the bruises pile up every time Dean managed to land another blow. He grabbed on to Dean’s forearms and pinned him against the doorway, forcing the struggling man to look him in the eyes. The gun fell to the floor with a clatter of metal, and Sam kicked it away. “Dean, it’s me. It’s Sam.”  
   
Dean’s blood shot eyes focused on him for the first time and Sam sighed in relief, thinking that whatever crazy state of mind had possessed his brother, Dean would surely regain his senses once he _saw_ Sam.  
   
Nothing could be further from the truth.  
   
Fingers curled towards his face as Dean tried to scratch out Sam’s eyes. “Sam is dead, Sam’s in Hell... stop using his face!” he growled and shoved, knocking Sam backward. “You won’t stop me... I won’t let you stop me!”  
   
Sam stumbled back, blinking his eyes in surprise. Dean was still trapped inside the nightmare, completely oblivious to the reality around him. Sam hadn’t managed to watch that far back, but it seemed like Marcus had managed to convince Dean that Sam had never returned from the Pit and now that he was awake, Sam could only imagine how freaked out his brother was at seeing him there, alive and kicking.  
   
“It was a all dream, Dean,” Sam tried to explain. Maybe pure logic and reason would get through. “I’m alive; Ben is alive... none of it was real.”  
   
He could see that Dean was growing tired already. One week strapped to a bed had taken its toll on Dean’s body and Sam could only hope that his strength ran out before one of them got hurt.  
   
“Think, Dean... we’ve been hunting for almost a year since I got back from Hell. You know that I can’t be dead.”  
   
Dean paused at that, his hands grabbing at his head instead of Sam’s neck, where he was trying to take a hold. “You’re lying... I was with Lisa and Ben... I wasn’t hunting anymore.”  
   
Sam nodded. “That’s right... and then I came to get you and we started hunting again,” Sam pushed on, taking advantage of Dean’s moment of lucidity. “Remember the hunt where we—“  
   
Sam stopped himself, realizing that the hunt he was remembering had happened before he went to Hell. He had no memory of what he and Dean had done together since they’d begun working together again. How could he help Dean remember if he couldn’t recall any of it himself? “Remember us fighting those dragons with the broken sword?” Sam finished, hopefully. It was the first hunt he could remember after waking up in Bobby’s panic room, the one where he had started atoning for all the hurt he had caused by saving Dean’s life.  
   
Dean frowned at the question. Brow scrunched, thinking hard, clearly searching whatever fragmented memories he still had. “Dragons don’t exist...” he said, at last and brought his knee up into Sam’s stomach. “Try harder.”  
   
Sam had no other choice but throw a punch, just to push Dean away from him. Even though he tried to pull it, Dean’s reflexes were slower than usual and Sam’s fist hit him squarely on the jaw. Blood flew from where Dean bit into his lip.  
   
“Remember killing the Phoenix? The high noon gun fight in the Old West?” Sam tried again. His brother’s love for the Old West had to count for something.  
   
Dean ran at him like a raging bull charging a red flag. The force of the hit stole Sam’s breath away and drove them both to the floor. “That was a dream... stop trying to poke my head, you son of a bitch!” Dean yelled, furiously, grasping desperately to what he perceived as reality.  
   
Sam raised his arms, trying to protect his face as best he could. It was all he could do until he managed to roll them over and pin Dean to the floor under his weight. “Dean, you gotta listen to me... we don’t have time for this,” Sam pointed out. Any minute now the rest of the guards would wise up to the fact that Dean was missing and they would be royally screwed. “It was real, I AM real... they were keeping you in a dreamscape all this time. Like the Djinn did when he caught you!”  
   
Dean fought against his hold like a wild cat and Sam was soon forced to let him go before his brother hurt himself with how much force he was putting against the restraining arms. Scrambling away, Dean wiped the sweat from his eyes and blinked at Sam.  
   
He was exhausted, Sam could see that now. Chest heaving with each breath, skin glistening with sweat, blood dripping from his nose and mouth.  
   
“I remember the Djinn,” Dean said. He seemed to be talking to himself rather than at Sam. “I remember... the yellow eyed demon working with them... I remember them attacking Lisa and Ben,” Dean went on, eyes scrunching shut, forcing himself to sort through his memories. “You weren’t there... you weren’t there. I was all alone and I couldn’t protect them.”  
   
Sam moved closer, hoping that the fight had finally drained Dean. He barely had time to dodge a kick aimed at his groin, unable to stop it from connecting with his knee. Joint ringing in pain, Sam watched as Dean climb back up, using the wall for support, charging again even before he was completely vertical.  
   
“Dean, please, snap out of it!”  
   
Sam raised his hand to stop the blow, but the flying fist still hit him right in the ear. Head ringing and his balance shot to hell, Sam veered closer to the edge of the balcony.  
   
“I remember being attacked in an alley and bitten while you watched,” Dean said throwing another wild punch. “I remember being afraid and alone, in a place filled with bright-lit creatures and knowing that you wouldn’t come for me... why do I remember these things if you are really Sam? My brother would have my back!”  
   
Sam had no answer for that. If he were to be honest with himself, he couldn’t even tell if those were things that had happened while Dean was inside Marcus’ dream or real events that had happened while Sam had no soul. Sam prayed that it was the first rather than the latter.  
   
Dean was pushing him towards the edge with each word of hatred that was coming from his mouth and Sam had no other choice but to attack instead of defend or he knew Dean would stop only when he’d pushed Sam over the edge.  
   
It was like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Sam blocked Dean’s fist with his elbow, turned them around and threw a right hook that sent his brother stumbling backwards, straight into the Sam’s foot. There was a moment of panic in Dean’s eyes as their feet tangled and he realized that he was tipping over the balcony’s ledge.  
   
Sam reached out with his hand, horror covering his face. His fingers barely brushed Dean’s skin before grasping empty air. Anguish rose in Sam’s throat and erupted in a pained “NO!”  
   
This couldn’t be happening; Sam only wanted to subdue Dean, stop him for long enough to make him listen to reason. It seemed, like everyone other good deed that Sam had tried to do in his life, this one too would end bloody.  
   
Heart hammering against his ribcage, Sam took a breath and reluctantly neared the edge of the roof; the last thing he wanted to do was look down at the mangled body of his brother, but he needed to be sure. He needed to see with his own eyes.  
   
Wind blew his hair back as Sam leaned over, eyes blurry with tears he wasn’t aware of shedding making the whole landscape amorphous and undefined.  
   
In a small rim of sharp rocks, Sam could see a body. Bodies, he emended in his head. More than he could count.  
   
Bile rose inside his mouth as he recognized a couple of uniforms like the one Brenda had been wearing, the one Sam himself had put on before she’d been killed. There were more people, bodies too mangled for Sam to identify, his heart skipping beats until he realized that, whoever they were, they were wearing much more clothing that Dean had been. With a sick feeling, Sam realized that he was looking at what was left of Marcus’ staff.  
   
Wrapped up in grief and blinding hope, Sam almost missed the bloody fingernails gripping the ledge of the wall. “Dean!” Sam yelled, relief swirling inside his chest and leaving him dizzy.  
   
Dean looked up, the small gesture almost enough to dislodge his precarious hold. Sam leaned forward as far as he could go without joining his brother. Below, framing Dean’s grimacing face, all Sam could see was grey, like a thunderous sea made of sharp edges and unforgiving stone. “Take my hand!”  
   
The stubborn look in Dean’s red face was the last thing that Sam expected right then, the last thing he wanted to see. It _would_ be the last thing he would see of Dean if he didn’t grab a hold of Sam’s hand. “Dean, come on... please!”  
   
“You’re not Sam,” Dean insisted, looking back down as if he was trying to gauge the distance of his fall. “Sam is dead... everyone’s dead.”  
   
Blood froze inside Sam’s veins. Dean’s disheartened words... his broken tone of someone who had nothing left to lose... Dean was getting ready to let go!  
“Don’t you dare do that, you fuck! Don’t you dare!” Sam let out in anger. Then, on a desperate attempt, Sam reached inside his picket and grabbed his cell phone. “Lisa’s alive... I can prove it to you. Just grab my hand and I’ll prove it to you!”  
   
Dean looked up in doubt. Sam could see it in his eyes that he wanted to believe, that he was desperate to believe, but too afraid to try. Too hurt to hope.  
   
With barely a glimpse at the display screen, Sam dialed Lisa’s number, praying that she hadn’t changed it. The ring tone seemed to last forever, even as Dean’s fingers began to slip, sweaty tips unable to hold his weight much longer.  
   
 _“Hello? Who is this?”_  
   
Just a few words, and Dean’s eyes blinked clear, like he was only now waking up. He looked up at Sam as if he was seeing him now for the first time. “Lisa? That’s really Lisa?”  
   
If it weren’t for the precarious position Dean was in, Sam would’ve smacked him upside the head. For the past several minutes Sam had been trying his best to get Dean back, desperately pulling at every string he could think of to snap his brother back to reality; all it had taken were a few words from a woman who no longer even remember Dean for him to come back.  
   
It hurt like hell, even if Sam figured that he had it coming. After all, he had spent more than a year being a stranger to his own brother. however, all that mattered now was getting Dean to safety.  
   
When Dean’s fingers tentatively reach up and wrap themselves around Sam’s wrist he almost yelped in triumph, settling for throwing his brother a bright smile. For the first time since Balthazar had dropped him on the roof of that house, Sam felt like Dean was back, safe with him.  
   
It took less than a second for that feeling to melt away. The instant Dean’s right hand closed around Sam’s wrist, he noticed the crooked form of two of Dean’s fingers. Broken and out of shape.  
   
Unprepared for the sharp pain that traveled down his arm when he put most of his weigh on those fingers, Dean yelped and let go.  
   
Sam’s whole world shrink down to the feeling of Dean’ sweaty skin under his fingers, slipping away under Dean’s weight. Sam felt his feet sliding forward, dragged towards the cliff, gravity conspiring for him to join Dean in his fall. Sam panicked and over compensated.  
   
Dean’ scream of pain was seconds behind the dry sound of his shoulder slipping out of its socket, even as Sam jerked him over the top of the ledge and into safety. He didn’t move from where Sam had dropped him, white-hot pain blurring the whole world.  
   
Sam looked down in alarm, realizing what had happened. “I’m sorry... sorry, sorry,” he said over and over, reaching for Dean’s other shoulder and pulling his brother towards him.  
   
Dean lay panting, leaning against Sam’s chest, his limp arm trapped between the two of them. Their hearts beat wildly, racing horses competing for first position.  
   
“Now I know you’re real,” Dean gasped after awhile, pain lacing every breath, words puffing against Sam’s neck. “Only my gigantor lil’brother could ev... ever break my arm trying to rescue me.”  
   
Sam laughed, carefully hugging his brother closer. “If I’d known that,” he said, breathing in the sweat and sour smell of Dean being alive and well. “I would’ve done it sooner.”  
   
Dean rested his forehead on Sam’s shoulder. Sam knew he had to be exhausted and in pain, but he couldn’t let him rest. Not yet. “Come on, we need to get out of here,” he said, taking a quick peek at his watch. They were already running late.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Bobby wasn’t where he was supposed to be.  
   
Sam wasn’t saying as much, but Dean could tell from the deep frown on his face that something was not right.  
   
His brother’s expressions, at least, Dean could still read right. Everything else around him was strange and unfamiliar and had it not been for the pain in his shoulder, Dean would have pinched himself to make sure that he wasn’t, in fact, still dreaming.  
   
Bobby, like Sam, like Lisa, like everyone in his life, was supposed to be dead. Some part of Dean didn’t find it the least bit odd that the older man wasn’t at the rendezvous point like Sam seemed to believe he should have been.  
   
Dean had trusted Sam on the rooftop, had believed that it was truly Lisa’s voice that he had heard on the cell phone. Had believed that everything Dean could remember from the past four years had been nothing but a dream. But what if Sam was wrong? What if _this_ was the real dream?  
   
A place where everyone was still alive, a place where Dean could walk, a place where there was still something they could do to stop the world from ending. It really seemed too good to be true.  
   
“It’s real,” Sam’s voice broke into his thoughts, startling Dean. Was he being that obvious?  
   
“Yes,” Sam replied. “You are also thinking out loud. Quit worrying, we’ll be out of here soon.”  
   
Dean cradled his dislocated arm closer to his stomach and followed Sam, who kept looking at the watch. “What’s with the sudden time obsession, Doc Brown?” Dean asked.  
   
Sam’s smile was genuine and shy. It convinced Dean that he truly was his brother more than all the words Sam has spoken so far.  
   
“Waiting for our cue,” Sam said mysteriously. “Maybe he’s running late too...” he mumbled to himself.  
   
Before Dean had a chance to ask what the hell Sam was talking about, there was a loud boom, quickly followed by shaking walls and the sound of all the windows breaking.  
   
“Our cue?” Dean ventured, hoping that was true. He really didn’t feel up to fighting an enemy that could make the walls tremble like that.  
   
“Our cue,” Sam smirked and grabbed Dean’s elbow. “Let’s go,” he said and pulled him along, as if Dean had somehow forgotten the complex meaning of the verb ‘go’.  
   
Bobby was waiting for them as they descended the stairs to a pantry of some sort, heartfelt grin splashed across his graying beard as he counted heads and saw that there were two Winchesters coming down.  
   
“Took you long enough,” Sam complained with a smile.  
   
“I was delayed,” Bobby explained. “Our friend Balthazar has no decent concept of _‘in the vicinity’_. How’re you holdin’ up, kid?” he asked, directing his attention from Sam to Dean.  
   
“Happy to see you alive,” Dean let out.  
   
“Yeah,” Bobby nodded, apparently not one bit surprised with the fact that Dean thought him dead. “I figured that rat Marcus would turn on me as soon as I handed over the Nail. He had the balls to order Balthazar to kill me as soon as his greasy paws were over the thing; our friendly angel took the chance to zap me out of there.”  
   
Sam’ smile widen. “Finally, a plan that goes right.”  
   
“Well,” Bobby voiced, giving Dean an appraising look. “We’re not out of here yet.”  
   
Dean fought the urge to hide his swollen arm and naked chest. He knew that these people were his closest family, but a part of his brain kept on insisting that they should all be dead. A part of his brain saw them as nothing but strangers.  
   
“Have you guys crossed paths with any guards yet? Or anyone at all?” Bobby went on, diverting his gaze to more important things.  
   
“Can’t speak for the guards, but everyone else is dead,” Sam informed grimly. “I think Marcus arranged to kill them all. With Champagne.”  
   
Bobby palled at the mention of Marcus’ _‘weapon’_ of choice. “Son of bitch... I think he tried to do the same to me,” he said, wiping the sweat off his face. “Either way, something’s not smelling right... even with half of them dead, this is all a little bit too easy. Balthazar wouldn’t keep him busy this long...”  
   
“Where’s Balthazar now?” Sam asked, making his way to the door, exchanging his tranq-gun for his Taurus. Any guard remaining at the gates would be alert to the presence of intruders and a tranquilizer wouldn’t do them much good against real bullets. “You good to use this?” he asked, handing Dean his Colt.  
   
Dean nodded, tucking his broken arm in the hem of his pajamas pants to keep it from hanging loose. It wasn’t much in terms of support, and it made the elastic band of the things hang precariously low, but he felt a little more like himself with the gun in his hand. His aim with his left wasn’t as good as his right, but Dean could make do just fine with that hand.  
   
“Hell if I know,” Bobby told him, grabbing his own gun. “Last I saw him, Marcus was convinced that he had himself a private little angel bitch... I imagine Balthazar will tire of that pretty fast. Besides, I got the impression that Balthazar was afraid that we might get company pretty soon. Feathery company.”  
   
“Raphael? Castiel?” Sam ventured, trying to guess which of those angels would make Balthazar more nervous at this point.  
   
“Does it really make a difference?” Bobby asked with a shrug. “I say we just get the hell out of Dodge and let Marcus deal with whichever pissed off angel drops by.”  
   
“That name... Marcus,” Dean started, tasting the word on his lips. If he closed his eyes, he could see a brown haired guy with dead eyes, looming over him, raising a leg to kick him. Had that been real? “He’s the one doing all of this?”  
   
Sam’s hand froze on the door handle. The look he and Bobby gave Dean made the older Winchester wonder if he had somehow grown a second head. At this point, it wouldn’t have surprised him.  
   
“Yeah... you met him?”  
   
Dean nodded slowly, unsure if that was the right answer. He remembered that Marcus guy questioning him about Castiel, wanting to know everything about angels. He remembered Ben asking the same questions, always pushing, always wanting to know more about them. For one second, the two of them merged inside his head and Dean shivered.  
   
In his mind, Dean could see himself with Ben, watching late night horror movies, sitting side by side on the couch until they fell asleep, both tired of laughing so hard at how badly movie people got monsters.  
   
He could see Ben, leaning over the edge of the Impala’s engine, learning how to tune in a cylinder until the car was purring.  
   
He could feel Ben’s shoulder, pressed against his own, as they went over protection sigils and angel lore.  
   
It was impossible to tell which of those memories were his and Ben’s and which were made up with a fake Ben, in fake life where all that mattered was that some unscrupulous man got want he wanted.  
   
And Ben, the real Ben, wouldn’t know which memories were real either, because his memories of Dean were all gone. Dean had made sure of that. He could remember that much.  
   
The feeling of pointless invasion and violation filled Dean with such sadness and anger that he wavered on his feet.  
   
“Dean?” Sam stepped in closer to his brother, one hand coming up to touch Dean’s uninjured shoulder. “What’s wrong?”  
   
Dean never got a chance to answer. Sunlight sneaked in through the open door, inviting them to freedom. Everything else could wait until they were out of there.  
   
However, escape wasn’t meant to be as easy as they had hoped for. As soon as their eyes adjusted to the change in light, Bobby got his answer as to where all the guards had gone.  
   
Surrounding them, spread over the front gate and sides of the house, were more than ten men, faces like stone and guns pointed at their heads, begging just one of them to make the wrong move to turn that walkway into a bloodbath.  
   
Somewhere at a distance, there was an implosion of bright light. Like a star had fallen in the back yard. No one was paying enough attention to wonder what it might’ve been.

  
≪◇≫

 

When Marcus opened his eyes, the world had changed. He could see further than any human eyes could see, each color and shape perfectly defined despite being a hundred miles or a hundred feet away; the air was laden with smells, each tasting as new and refreshing as if he’d never experienced them before.  
   
He felt twenty feet tall; he felt like he could fly.  
   
His skin was on fire, a faint sensation that he recognized as alien, as something that should hurt but that his brain failed to recognize as a threat. Wanting to check for himself if the flames he could feel were real or just in his head, Marcus raised his arm.  
   
In his mind, he could see the limb moving, stretching in front of him, tanned skin, glinting in the sun.  
   
His eyes told him differently. His arm remained stubbornly by his side.  
   
Trying harder, Marcus made himself walk towards the house. His feet didn’t even twitch.  
   
“Not yet,” he heard himself say. It was his voice, but the accent and the cadence of words were not his own.  
   
 _What have you done?_ He screamed, even though no sound escaped his mouth.  
   
“You’re an angel now,” the same disturbingly familiar voice answered him. “Enjoy the ride while it lasts... because it wont last long, I’m afraid.”  
   
 _No! NO! I’m in control! I’m in command! Let me out! You tricked me!_  
   
His body turned to the side; eyes that were no longer his to control landing on the man slumped in the metal chair by the table. He seemed asleep.  
   
“See that gorgeous man sitting there?” the angel inside his body told Marcus. “The only reason why I traded _that_ for—“ he paused, and Marcus could feel the evaluation in his tone, the way he was found lacking. “—for this, was because idiots are sort of a hobby of mine. And you, my dear, are a very rich idiot...”  
   
Marcus was still screaming as his head of security informed him that the sigils had been broken and he could get back inside.

≪◇≫

   
“I thought you were gonna take care of the security cameras,” Sam whispered out the corner of his mouth to Bobby as all three of them were marched back into the house.  
   
“I did,” Bobby whispered back, sneaking a look at the camera in the ceiling’s corner. The blinking red light mocked him in a beat-beat-beat tempo. “I think they found out and turned them back on.”  
   
“Shuddup, you two!” one of the guards, a burly man with curly red hair yelled. He punctuated his command by driving the butt of his gun into Sam’s back.  
   
Sam went to his knees, barely managing to catch himself with his tied up hands. He felt like a T-Rex, long arms rendered to the size of his fingers as he pushed himself back up with a angry glare in Red’s direction.  
   
Red was nothing but a blur in Sam’s field of vision until he heard a grunt and a body hitting the wall. Sam looked up just in time to watch Dean press the guard’s face against the wall, his good shoulder pinning the man’s chest. Dean was rearing his head back to head butt the dazed man when the other guards moved in to action.  
   
Two moved in to subdue Dean, while a third was reaching for his gun.  
   
Alert, Bobby extended one foot just in time to send one of the guards flying through the air and crashing head first into the side of heavy cabinet. The china inside rattled almost as hard as the man’s teeth.  
   
Sam twirled on the floor and scissored his legs, summarily trapping the other guard’s legs until he was on his back, staring at the ceiling, too surprised to react. Sam rolled his shoulders and lurched, hard enough to reach the downed guard’s face and head butted him. Eyes rolling back in his head, the man was unconscious before he could realize what the hell had just happened.  
   
Sam stole a glance in Dean’s direction, just in time to see the guard he’d been fighting drop to the floor, also unconscious. Sam could see the blooming bruise on the man’s eye, where Dean had elbowed him; Dean however, seemed less than steady on his feet, a sharp reminder that he was fighting injured.  
   
The remaining man was rearing up to jump Dean’s back, figuring he would be the easiest target; instead of shouting a warning that would only arrive too late, Sam spun and grabbed a paperweight from the top of the nearest shelf. The heavy object flew through the air like a silent missile, straight to the guard’s forehead. The man went down with a grunt, a trickle of blood flowing from a cut over his left brow.  
   
Bobby looked around, appearing as dazzled as Sam and Dean felt; they were the only ones standing. Before there was time to celebrate, however, there was a loud boom outside, the walls vibrating under the onslaught.  
   
The light bulbs in the large chandelier above them exploded in a burst of thin glass, forcing the three hunters to duck low and throw their bounded hands up over their heads, trying to avoid the cascading shower of glass that rained down on them.  
   
As soon as the shattering and rumbling died down, Sam was on his feet, checking to make sure Dean was none the worse for wear before exchanging a worried glance with Bobby. He searched the older man’s face for confirmation that the last bang wasn’t of their making; Bobby’s subtle head shake confirmed his suspicions. He had set only one charge of C4. “Shit!”  
   
“Lemme guess,” Dean broke in, out of breath, one hand resting over the chest of the guard he’d rendered unconscious. “The rest of the party guests have arrived?” he finished, grimacing in pain as he shifted his dislocated shoulder.  
   
Even from a distance, Sam could see the way his brother’s legs were shaking. He figured Dean wouldn’t be standing on his own two feet for much longer. And now, they had pissed off angels to deal with...  
   
Sam never got a chance to answer his brother or worry further. The electric discharge of three different taser guns hit them all at once, sending Sam, Dean and Bobby contorting and frizzing to the ground like fish on dry land.  
   
“Great... now we get to carry them,” Sam heard one of the newly arrived guards saying, just the before the lights went out. Sam’s last thought was that it served them right. Maybe they’d get a hernia and die.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
The room was plunged into almost darkness, a soft spotlight hitting the desk where a man sat, phone in hand. Sam blinked his eyes, forcing himself to focus. Beside him, he could hear Bobby and Dean also beginning to stir.  
   
Making eye contact with Sam first, Marcus held up a single finger, clearly anticipating their immediate questions and staying their comments until he finished his call. They were all still loopy enough to actually obey.  
   
“Yes, I’m sure this is what I want to do. You’re paid to do my bidding regarding my money, not to questions my reasons, so do I advise you to do what you’re paid to do, or I’ll find someone who will.”  
   
Sam blinked, taking a moment to center himself. He shifted on the leather couch were they had been place, shoulder bumping into Bobby to his right and eliciting an obnoxious sound from the fabric that resembled all too much a fart. Dean, on the far end of the comfortable seat, leaned forward to look at his brother.  
   
Sam resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. The all thing was too bizarre, even for them.  
   
In the middle of stopping Castiel from putting the world at risk, in the middle of being worried sick for Dean’s wellbeing for more than a week, in the middle of walking around with a metaphorical wall put inside his head by Death itself, to protect him from his memories of Hell, Sam was sitting on an expensive leather couch that made fart noises every time he tried to move, waiting for a mad man to finishing his call to what sounded like his accountant.  
   
Somewhere far away, in between this existence and the next, God had to be laughing really hard at Sam’s life.  
   
Marcus finished his call and finally turned his attention towards them with a smile on his weasel face. His eyes lingered on their bound wrists for a second before he spoke to the guards. “Okay... you gents can go now. Your services are no longer needed,” he said, throwing a large stack of bills towards the waiting men. “Don’t worry... the fellas outside won’t harm you, you guy can leave safely.”  
   
The guard in charge lifted an eyebrow, puzzled by the odd command. He wiggled the stack of bills in his hands, obviously trying to figure how rich he now was. “But sir—“  
   
Marcus’s fist hit the desk in front of him with enough force to crack the solid oak top. His face, as it slid into the light, was hideous to look at. The skin around his eyes, nose and mouth seemed to be eroding away, like the air in the room was made of acid. His colorless lips contrasted with the sipping red on the rest of his face, making him look like a burn victim who, by looks alone, should be dead. He looked dead.  
   
Sam shivered, realizing whom Marcus looked like. He reminded him of Nick, after Lucifer had ridden his skin for too long. What the hell had that man done to himself?  
   
The guards flinched away, their eyes downcast. Sam doubted they had seen anything like that before. Marcus hardly seemed human at all.  
   
“Are you so dumb you can’t understand when you’re being fired?” the man behind the broken desk said, his voice far too powerful. “Now give me some fucking peace and quiet inside my own house or I’ll deal with the lot of you the same way I dealt with those other useless!”  
   
The head of security gave him one last dubious look, before shrugging his shoulders and leaving.  
   
Sam stole a glance outside. Everything seemed quiet enough for now, but he remembered the sonic bang he had heard before. There was more than one angel out there, waiting for them to exit the illusion of security they had inside that house. He wanted to fear for the guards’ lives when they ventured outside, but he found out that, after what he’d seen them do, Sam couldn’t really bother to care.  
   
He could guess pretty accurately how Marcus intended to get out of this with his hide intact; all he had to do was exchange them for his own safety.  
   
“Listen, this doesn’t have to end like this,” Sam started talking as fast as he could, squirming out of the couch and taking a step forward. If nothing else, maybe he could distract Marcus long enough to give Bobby and Dean a chance to escape. “We can still get you wha—“  
   
“Save it for the desperate women at the bar,” Marcus said, getting off his chair and walking towards them. “I’ve been cramped in here for far too long to have the patience to listen to your babbling. And I’m not in the mood to risk my fine ass over the three of you. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a fucking garrison standing outside, just waiting to tears us apart. So...”  
   
The three hunters didn’t miss the moment when a knife appeared in Marcus’ hands, their bodies tensing in a flee-or-fight stance.  
   
They outnumbered the man, but that meant little to their advantage. Even if his display of strength earlier hadn’t been enough to let them know that it wouldn’t be an easy fight, Sam knew that he would be the one doing most of the actual fighting.  
   
Bobby was no lame duck when it came to a scuffle; Sam knew that the man could hold his own in a tight spot better than anyone. But that was with a weapon on his hands. Hand-to-hand had never been a favorite of the older hunter.  
   
And Dean… Sam was sure that his brother had used the last of his remaining strength fighting that guard in the corridor. Now, even seated, he was slumped against that couch like the thing had suction powers; his head wobbled from time to time, like his neck occasionally forgot that it was suppose to hold it up. Dean’s gaze, however, was intently focused on Marcus’ peeling face.  
   
Instead of charging the approaching man, Sam waited until he was near enough to reach them before he lunged.  
   
His body hit empty air.  
   
“Way to show your appreciation, you idiot!” Marcus barked, in a very unlike Marcus’ tone, from his new location in front of Dean. “What were you going to do? Squish me to the floor until I died? Dry hump your way out of here through my leg?”  
   
Before Sam could pick himself off the floor and Dean had time to react, Marcus had already used the knife in his hands.  
   
To cut the ropes around Dean’s wrists free. Dean hissed in pain the second his broken arm lost the support of the bindings. Tears sprung to his eyes as he silently cradled the injured limb on his good arm, staring at the man with the knife.  
   
When Marcus turned around without so much as throwing an insult his way, Dean frowned.  
   
“Balthazar?” Bobby ventured, tentatively offering his wrists to the approaching knife.  
   
“No, it’s Mother Teresa,” the eye-roll could be heard in his tone of voice. “Of course it’s me, you idiots!”  
   
He saved Sam for last, giving him a scowl while he cut the ropes. “What are you doing inside Marcus?” Sam asked, confused.  
   
“I grew tired of being handsome and decided to give fugly a chance,” was Balthazar’s sarcastic answer. “The man wanted to be an angel vessel,” he added, voice equally mocking. “I was happy to oblige.”  
   
“His body seems to be disagreeing with that,” Bobby pointed out.  
   
“Yes, yes,” Balthazar said with a flourish of his hand, going back to the desk and peeking into the open laptop. “I did warn him about that, but the man was positively sure that he had found the perfect solution for the inexorable fact that his body was simply not meant to be a vessel. Now that we got _that_ out of our chests... can we get the fuck out of here, please?”  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
“What do you mean?” Dean asked. Now that they had a moment to breath, he could finally get a sense of the damage done to his body and try and figure out some of his lost time. The world was moving too damn fast for him to keep up and Dean grabbed on to what he could grasp. “He _wanted_ to be a vessel?”  
   
Dean had been trying to wrack his tired mind, searching for a reason why Marcus had done this. He’d taken Dean prisoner and had gone to such extremes, inflicted such pain and torment… and for what? To learn about angels?  Dean shook his head, no, try as he might, it made no sense to him; there were easier ways to find out about angels.  
   
Dean looked at his arms, one clutched to his side, the other extended. Dean felt a chill running up his spine. It was like looking at a stranger’s skin.  
   
There was an inflamed path of needle marks that went from the crux of his arm to his wrist, ending in a dark bruise in the back of his hand, where he figured an IV had been inserted at some point. His back still felt on fire, even without leaning back against the soft couch. Tentative fingers probed blindly, touching the damaged area and feeling around the swollen flesh. The memory of electric jolts that were bad enough to steal his breath away made Dean pull out his hand before he could figure what was wrong with his back.  
   
God! Even his dick hurt and even though Dean had no recollection of pulling out that particular tube, he knew all too well how that felt like. What had that man done to him?  
   
The aftermath of being injured jarred Dean more than the pain of the injuries themselves. He hated not remembering, he hated knowing that he’d been at the mercy of strangers.  
   
The only injury that Dean remembered receiving with any certainty was the two broken fingers on his right hand, from when Marcus had tried to question him. He remembered laughing in the man’s face like it was a distant dream.  
   
“Can we focus on what’s important here?” Balthazar’s rattled tone broke in, ignoring both Dean’s thoughts and his question. “Right now, the only thing preventing Raphael and his goons from coming inside and reducing of us all to dust, is the angel proofing on the damn house... but that still leaves us trapped as rats inside it.  
   
“He was studying me?” Dean concluded on his own, ignoring Balthazar’s frantic rant, pushing for answers. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him, questioning, worried. “Answer the fucking question!”  
   
The angel ran a hand over Marcus hair, staring in disgust as half of it ended up _in_ his hand. “Yes, okay! Somehow he managed to find out that one little detail that makes certain humans capable of housing one of us, while others aren’t,” the angel went on, looking bored with the explanation. “Apparently there’s a specific extra pair of chromosomes on your sorry asses that allows us to link,” he said with a shrug. “A twenty-forth pair, if I understood it right. The man’s thoughts aren’t exactly the most organized thing around.”  
   
“He developed a gene therapy to become a vessel?” Sam asked in a mix of awe and horror. He looked once more at Marcus deteriorating body. “But it didn’t work.”  
   
“Because every vessel is specific to an angel,” Bobby pitched in. “That’s why his body’s falling apart... because Dean’s genes are compatible with Michael alone, not you.”  
   
Balthazar shrugged. “As I said, I tried to warn him, but the man wouldn’t listen. I figured it wouldn’t harm your little rescue plan to be inside the man in charge, so I indulged him.”  
   
“Is that what you were doing on the phone,” Sam asked, remembering the odd conversation. “Indulging him?”  
   
The smirk on Marcus lips was twisted, but it was easy to recognized Balthazar’s own trademark smirk behind him. “No... that was me indulging myself. The man is, after all, filthy rich. And as soon as I get out of this mess you idiots dragged me into, so will I.”  
   
“How long?”  
   
The question was spoken so softly that no one seemed to have heard it at first. “How long?” Dean tried again, louder this time, his eyes burning holes on Balthazar’s new face. He couldn’t sit still anymore, his legs remembering the former paralysis and wanting nothing more than pace the room until the carpet was threadbare.  
   
“How long what, Dean?” Sam asked when the angel failed to answer once again.  
   
For Dean, four years had gone by. A period of time where he had been a father, a teacher, a widower. And yet, Sam still looked the same, Bobby hadn’t aged a day. The world was still standing. It was so confusing that it made his head throb. “How long was I here?”  
   
“It’s been a little over a week,” Sam whispered, sounding ashamed that it had taken them that long to find him and free him from that fake world. “Eight days.”  
   
Dean sat heavily on the leather couch that took up most of the small office. Concerned, Sam moved quickly across the room and knelt in front of him. His hand hovered above Dean’s shoulder, seemingly uncertain of where to land.  
   
“Hey,” Sam stared into his eyes, finally choosing Dean’s knee for the touch. “You all right?”  
   
Dean huffed in answer. He ran a hand through his hair, again surprised to find out how much it had grown in such a short time. There was more hair on his face than Dean ever remembered having, never being one to grow a beard. He had one now. “How soon until Raphael finds a way around the angel proofing?” he asked, looking from Sam’s worried face to the angel occupying Marcus’ body.  
   
Balthazar waved his arms around, shaking his head. It was easy to see that the angel hated being trapped like that. “Minutes... hours... days. Depends on how good the proofing is.”  
   
“Why is he here, anyway?” Dean asked. After all, they hadn’t exactly been hiding from Raphael and he had spent a better part of the almost two years ignoring them. Why the sudden interest?  
   
The answer was plain to see in the way the angel averted his gaze from them.  
   
“Dean’s right,” Bobby joined in. “Why is Raphael here? What ain’t you telling us?”  
   
”He’s after the Nail, isn’t he?” Sam offered when Balthazar’s silence stretched for too long.  
   
 _‘Our paths keep crossing, Dean Winchester... it is most... annoying’_  
   
Dean blinked. The onslaught of doubling images was splitting his aching head in two. Raphael coming after the Holy Nail and killing everyone in his path in a dark basement under Vatican City; Raphael prowling the grounds of Marcus’ house, waiting to kill them just the same.  
   
 _‘You know why I’m here, Dean. The same reason Jacob is... the same reason you are’_  
   
The words could’ve been spoken just now, even if Dean had heard them in a dream. It hadn’t happen. If he were to believe Sam, it hadn’t happen at all.  
   
And yet here they were, trapped while Raphael circled the waters, sniffing their blood like a hungry shark.  
   
“I might’ve slightly lessened the importance of the Nail,” Balthazar whispered, looking like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “It’s true; it can’t be used to control any angel or Heaven’s army...”  
   
“But...”  
   
“It is viewed as a sign of leadership,” the angel confessed.  
   
“Whoever controls Heaven’s weapons, controls the power,” Sam said, remembering the occasion when Castiel and Balthazar had used he and Dean to secure the weapons that Balthazar had stolen from Heaven. “These Nails... they were the main reason for that, weren’t they?”  
   
Balthazar sagged against the edge of the table. “Yes, yes, yes, okay? What do you want me to say?”  
   
“You damn idjit!” Bobby let out. “You could have at least let us know the risk we were taking by bringing the real thing here.”  
   
“There’s something else it does,” Balthazar whispered, looking defeated. “Something that might get us out of here alive.”  
   
“And you failed to mention it so far because...?” Bobby asked sarcastically, his patience for the evasive ways of the angel having run out a long time ago.  
   
Balthazar gave him a scolding look that did little to affect the older man. “ _Because_ it requires the destruction of the Nail... something that I would’ve rather not do, thank you very much.”  
   
Sam looked outside, even though the curtains were drawn closed and there was nothing he could see. The oppressing presence of the angels, however, went beyond their ability to being seen. “I don’t think we have much of a choice.”  
   
Dean sat silently, cradling his throbbing arm, as Balthazar explained how to use the Nail to assure their survival. He was only half listening, his mind barely registering the words as they left Marcus’ mouth.  
   
Dean had no idea that it was possible to hate so much someone he had only seen twice in his life. His brain was rattling with unanswered questions, but one... one in particular was making it hard for air to find its way into his lungs.  
   
If the Nail worked as Balthazar had advertised, this was Dean’s last chance of getting some answers. He couldn’t let it pass. Not without going insane.  
   
“Dean... DEAN!” Sam spoke louder, finally managing to attract his brother’s attention. “We’re ready to go.”  
   
Dean nodded; the affirmative gesture as far from agreement as it could be. “As long as the Enochian sigils hold, Raphael can’t come inside, right?” he asked, quietly, tentatively.  
   
“And I can’t get out,” Balthazar pointed out, annoyed. “In case you’ve forgotten.”  
   
“Sam, Bobby... could you give me a minute with Balthazar,” Dean said, looking at his family. “Alone.”  
   
Sam’s eyes burrowed inside his brother, seeing a lot more than what Dean was willing to show. He recoiled from the searching gaze. “No, Dean... don’t do this,” he whispered.  
   
“I’m not gonna _do_ anything,” Dean answered without meeting his eyes. “I just need some answers and—“  
   
“And you want Marcus to pay for what he’s done,” Sam finished for him, crouching near the spot where Dean sat. “Look at him, Dean... the man is already paying.”  
   
Dean chuckled, a dry and humorless sound that scared the crap out of Sam. “Eight days, right? That’s what you said, eight days?”  
   
Sam nodded, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.  
   
“It was the anniversary of your death, and Lisa decided that I needed a distraction, that we should go out and have some fun,” Dean started, his eyes fixed on the carpet red as wine. “She would do stuff like that, you know? To make it easier for me to get over the pain and I... the ring had been in my pocket for close to a month when she dragged me out. I proposed at dinner, that very night. She said yes—“  
   
Dean stopped him, one shaking hand washing over his face and dragging the hidden tears away.  
   
“Dean—“  
   
“I watched her die that night, Sam,” Dean cut in, his voice corroded away by emotion. “I lost control of the car and I had to watch her die that night. Slowly. In agony. Gurgling in her own blood by my side.”  
   
It was Sam’s turn to avoid Dean’s eyes, sucking in a breath at his brother’s words. It had been over six years since he’d lost Jess, but sometimes it still felt like yesterday.  
   
“That knowledge, those memories,” Dean went on, “that guilt—that was my reality for four years, courtesy of Marcus,” he said, spiting out the name. “And Ben...”  
   
“Dean... it wasn’t real,” Sam forced himself to say, needing the reminder as much as Dean.  
   
“I look at my hands and I still see his blood!” Dean blared. His eyes, when he finally looked around the others in the room, were firing pits of green flames. “That... _man_... played my life like it was some comic book that he could just tear out entire pages and screw with the rest! I—“  
   
The broken look in Dean’s face as his eyes finally rested on his brother told everything else that Dean couldn’t find in himself to voice.  
   
“...I just want some answers,” Dean finished, slumping against the leather couch.  
   
Bobby exchanged a worried glance with Sam. Neither liked to hear that level of despair on the oldest Winchester. Sam said nothing as he grabbed Bobby’s elbow and pulled him towards the door. Before stepping out, he turned and looked at Dean. “Just… don’t do anything stupid,” he said quietly, disappearing into the hall.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Sam paced the wood floors of the room they’d stepped into. He glanced at the door to the office where they’d left Dean, Marcus and Balthazar, listening for a moment for any sounds of trouble. When none came, he resumed his pacing, feeling Bobby’s worry bounce from him to the door.  
   
“We shouldn’t have left those two alone,” Bobby confided, playing with one of the balls on the pool table. The white ball slid smoothly across the felt, hitting three of the four sides before returning to his hand. Bobby’s knuckles were tight white when he grabbed it again. “That boy’s gonna do something stupid.”  
   
Sam stopped and looked at the old hunter; Bobby didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed on the door where they’d left Dean, alone… with Marcus and Balthazar. “Dean knows better than that,” he said firmly.  
   
Bobby hadn’t seen the look in Dean’s eyes, the utter pain and despair, the guilt and grief, the _need_ to set things right. Sam knew he had done the right thing in letting Dean do this. Besides, getting his obstinate brother out of there wouldn’t have worked. Hell, until he’s good and ready, nothing short of a blow to the head would do the job and Sam wasn’t about to cause his brother more pain on top of what Marcus had done.  
   
Sam leaned against one of the ceiling to floor windows, his hand playing with the button that controlled the light-waves on the smart wall. Whenever he flicked the switch to turn it into clear glass, he could see that the tall woman across the manicured yard, wearing an expensive business suit, was staring daggers back at him. He resisted the urge to wave at Raphael.  
   
Deep down, Sam knew which feeling was fueling Dean’s actions at that moment.  
   
Retribution.  
   
The notion set his teeth on edge. Revenge had taken so much out of Sam, had been his fuel and goal for so long in his life, after Jessica’s death, after dad’s and Dean’s death, after everything; it hurt to think of Dean being driven by the same sentiment.  
   
If there was one thing that Sam admired most about his brother, it was Dean’s ability to forgive, even if he never forgot. This time, however, Sam knew that would be asking for too much.  
   
“You know that angel out there isn’t gonna content itself with just making scary faces in the window for long,” Bobby went on. The inertia was getting on his nerves, even if the hunter wouldn’t fess up to it. “I say we use the thing now and get the hell out of here.”  
   
Sam gazed at the rusty Nail that Balthazar had given him for a second time in as many days. Like Dorothy in the Emerald City, all they had to do was click their ruby slippers... or rather, break the Nail and all angelic beings in the immediate area would be banished.  
   
The Nails, Balthazar had explained, were the root of the banishing sigils, the reason why blood was needed for it to work. This one was already soaked in enough blood that it needed nothing else.  
   
Blood of the lamb.  
   
“Let’s give him a few more minutes.”  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Once Sam and Bobby’s footsteps died away, Dean looked at Balthazar. “He was in the dream with me, wasn’t he?”  
   
Balthazar, who had been silently inspecting the liquor bar, opened one bottle and gave it a whiff. “Ghastly,” he sneered and pulled his nose away in disgust. “No taste at all.”  
   
“Answer my question,” Dean said quietly, wearily. “Was he there?”  
   
The angel turned to face him, leaning back against the cabinet. “Now, just so we’re clear... I’m wearing Marcus, but I am not Marcus, _capisce_?”  
   
Dean nodded, forcing himself to be calm. “So, that’s a yes,” he said, waiting for Balthazar’s confirming nod. “Who was he? Who did he pick to fuck with me?” Dean asked, his anger slipping away. Inside, his heart was hammering, his mind screaming over and over ‘ _please don’t say Ben, please don’t say Ben_ ’.  
   
“I think you’re well aware of the answer to that question,” Balthazar said, not a hint of sarcasm or scowl in his voice for the first time. “I’m sorry man, I truly am... it was a lousy thing to do, but the man is a piece of shit. What more can I say?”  
   
Dean was barely listening to what the angel was saying. His mind was a haze of anger as he remembered the fatherly relationship that he had maintained for what had been, for him, what amounted to years; instead, it was days, weeks, months spent with a man who had kidnapped him, tortured him, experimented on him and violated his most cherished memories of a kid Dean saw as a son.  
   
“Dean? Dean... you’re kind of changing color there, buddy,” Balthazar said, the concern in his voice more for himself than for Dean himself. “You’re not going to blow a gasket or something you humans do in these situations, are you?”  
   
“How long before his body completely shuts down?” Dean asked very quietly.  
   
Balthazar looked at him like he already knew what Dean was planning. He looked at his current vessel’s hands, analyzing the pale skin and burn-like marks. “Not long... maybe a couple of minutes, at most.”  
   
Dean’s smile was a terrifying thing to see. “Good. That will be more than enough time.”  
   
“For?”  
   
“Let’s go upstairs,” Dean simply said. “There’s something I want Marcus to see before he dies.”  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
Marcus looked at the double helix, spinning around itself on the computer’s screen, like two snakes trying to devour one another.  
   
“What am I looking at?” Marcus asked dryly. From the excited looks that the scientists in front of the screen kept throwing him, he figured that they had finally discovered something useful.  
   
“Dean Winchester,” one said, a short man with thin glasses that kept sliding down his hawk nose. “At least, his building blocks.”  
   
“Fascinating,” Marcus let out, unimpressed and already making his way out. He had no need for bricks and wood, he needed a way to make himself as suitable for an angel has Dean seemed to be.  
   
“We found what makes him different from us.”  
   
That sentence stopped Marcus in his tracks. He looked at the three men in turn; waiting to see which of them would start spilling the beans before he lost his patience entirely. The men, however, looking as if they had discovered that there was life on the Moon and that the satellite itself was made of cheese, seemed too intent on keeping the damn suspense. “Yes...?” Marcus prompted.  
   
“Well, you know how each person has the same number of chromosomes: forty-six. Twenty-three pairs of two chromosomes; one pair alone determines the sex and the remaining twenty-two determine everything else—“  
   
“Get to the part where I care,” Marcus cut in. Biology was boring at school; it hadn’t improved with age.  
   
“Dean has twenty-four pairs. Forty-seven chromosomes total.”  
   
“Come again?” Marcus let out, looking back at the screen. The double helix, Dean’s DNA sequence, spinning on screen, was still just a squiggle for him.  
   
“We checked and double checked, just to be sure,” another one of the scientist, a woman with small teeth, said. “Couldn’t believe it ourselves. Dean has an extra pair.”  
   
“You mean an extra chromosome.”  
   
“No, I mean an actual extra pair. I don’t think the scientific community has ever seen something like this,” the lead scientist said, looking like he was about to come in his pants.  
   
“Unlike people with Down’s Syndrome or men with a XXY and XYY, all of which also have an extra chromosome, associated with the twenty-first pair or the twenty-third pair, Dean’s extra stands alone. A twenty-forth pair, a limp chromosome, waiting for its match.”  
   
“The angel compatible with him,” Marcus deduced, his eyes glinting at the possibilities.  
   
“Exactly!”  
   
Marcus smiled for the first time since he had entered the lab. “And it can be duplicated?” he asked, hopeful, not daring to celebrate his victory yet.  
   
The head scientist pointed to the far side of the room with a beaming smile, showing Marcus where a silver machine was spinning several red vials at blurring speed. “It’s happening even as we speak.”  
   
Marcus’ smile broadened. “Good.” He was going to be just like Dean Winchester.  
   


  
≪◇≫

  
   
“Hello, Marcus.”  
   
Marcus looked around, trying to figure out where he was. All he could remember was being trapped in a ball of cotton, hearing and experiencing his own life through a veil of muffled sounds and feelings. “Where are we? What are you doing here?”  
   
Dean smiled, his arms opened wide to embrace the empty alley. “Don’t you recognize it?”  
   
Marcus breathing sped, his lungs working frenetically to expel the terror from inside his chest. “This isn’t possible!” he voiced, his eyes darting around, looking into the shadows, waiting. “I’m the one controlling the dream, not you.”  
   
“Not anymore,” Dean whispered menacingly. “It’s time for you to get the whole tour. Let’s start,” Dean paused, drinking in the man’s fright. “With Hell.”  
≪◇≫

 

  
EPILOGUE

Dean sat in the passenger seat of the Impala, head leaning against the window, haggard gaze lost on the suburbia scenery slowly rolling by. His right arm, bone recently set into its rightful place, rested limply over his lap.  
   
Sam could almost be tricked into thinking that Dean was sleeping, but he knew better than that. Dean hardly slept now.  
   
After they had banished Raphael, Balthazar and every other angel in the vicinity of the broken Nail, they’d made their way out of Marcus’ house before the guards gave up on being obedient and decided to get back at work.  
   
The minute they had crossed the gates out of Marcus property, Dean had adamantly asked that they drive by Lisa’s house before anything else. There had been something in his brother’s voice that made Sam reluctant to point out that Lisa was a couple of states away, that there was no way they could get there in less than a day. Sam was sure that Dean had no idea where he was.  
   
Fortunately for all of them, Dean had finally passed out on the drive to the motel.  
   
In that nightmare place where Marcus had trapped Dean’s mind, Lisa had been dead for over four years; Ben had just died in Dean’s arms; Sam had never left Hell. The second Dean had opened his eyes, Sam knew it was that world that he was seeing around him, not Bobby sleeping in the other bed or Sam, sitting at the table, biting his nails.  
   
Instead of ignoring the unshed tears in his brother’s eyes, instead of giving him any pretense of privacy that both would be painfully aware of being fake, Sam had grabbed Dean and the Impala and given his brother what he needed: the reassurance that Lisa and Ben were both alive and well.  
Heck, he had promised as much they had been fighting on that rooftop, Dean half crazy with drugs and pain. Sam prided himself for keeping his promises.  
   
“We’re here,” he whispered, knowing fully well that the words were unnecessary. Dean probably knew that neighborhood like the back of his hand.  
   
He parked the car under a maple tree, red leaves reflecting the light of the setting sun. “Wanna go over there?” Sam offered.  
   
The door to Lisa’s house was closed, the fading light of day found lights glowing softly on the ground floor and the porch. A hint of music escaped the opened window and Dean leaned in to it.  
   
Lisa was singing along. Her husky voice never failed to spread a wave of warmth from Dean’s stomach to his groin, even if she couldn’t sing for shit.  
   
Not this time though. The feeling of loss was too great to allow for any other sentiment.  
   
The scene inside Lisa’s house wasn’t all that hard to imagine. After all, he’d been fortunate to have been a part of it, for real, for twelve months. All Dean needed to do was close his eyes and he could see them: Lisa moving around the kitchen, fixing Ben’s dinner; Ben, in his usual spot by the kitchen counter, complaining about the vegetables that Lisa insisted to be a permanent fixture on his plate.  
   
Dean opened his eyes, feeling that his heart was at last subsiding inside his chest. The dining room table, nearest to the opened window, was already filled with people. He could see Ben, his back to the window; he could see Lisa, walking around getting food on the table; he could see a tall black guy, yellow sweater and glass of wine in his hands, sliding around Lisa and affectionately kissing her neck before sitting across from Ben.  
   
Dean smiled sadly, feeling the sting of tears in his eyes. It seemed like Castiel had done more than heal Lisa when he’d gone around righting Crowley’s wrongs. Mark, or Matt, whatever the man’s name was -Lisa’s new boyfriend-, the first casualty of Crowley’s plan, was now alive and well.  
   
And it wasn’t even that Lisa had a new love in her life, and that that man was sitting in what used to be Dean’s place at the table, that he was replacing Dean in Lisa’s bed. No, the real kick to the gut was the fact that he seemed to fit in there a hell of a lot better than Dean ever had and definitely ever could.  
   
“Do you want to…” Sam offered, unsure of how to end that sentence. Do you want to knock on their door? Do you want to talk to them? Do you want to undo Castiel’s memory wipe? Turn back time?  
   
Dean shook his head. It was impossible to take the place of someone who had never existed. “Just drive, Sam,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”  
   
He had seen enough.  
   


≪◇≫

   
Forbes’ list of the most rich and powerful men on Earth was well known by all. The official one, anyway, the one that every Joe, Mary and Paul had access to.  
   
There was another list though. Privy only to very select eyes, a list of names that only those who were somebody in high places were made aware of. A list where very few were added.  
   
Marcus Finnegan was one of the names on that list. In fact, his was among the top five.  
   
He was a man who had everything he could possibly wish for, a man to whom nothing was refused, a man whose reach was vast and powerful.  
   
And yet, there was one thing that had long eluded Marcus. A priceless find he longed for but was unable to procure. So far.  
   
Immortality.  
   
Having spent a lifetime making his fortune one of the largest in the world, Marcus figured he deserved another lifetime in which to spend it, where he could enjoy the fruits of his labor. And another after that; and another; and another...  
   
Like every other search for immortality, his had started with the most logical path: science. Every probable theory in cryogenics and cell regeneration – and even those less probable – had come under his scrutiny. And, just as quickly, each had been discarded, either for the simple fact that they were too crazy to actually be called science, or because they were so far behind in their development stage that Marcus would either be dead or a very old man when those theories became practical.  
   
No... Marcus needed something graspable, something within reach and in the realms of the possible. And he needed it now, while he still had the vigor of life. Forty was the new twenty, someone had told him once, and Marcus wanted a solution for his quest before he turned forty-one.  
   
Then, in a conversation with a friend, Marcus discovered there were more venues than science. A lot more. A whole new world of possibilities.  
   
Trevor Bins, one of the few people Marcus considered a friend, one that he didn’t maintain for the sake of business but because he actually enjoyed the company of the man, had first brought it up, and before he knew it, Marcus found himself headed down a different path.  
   
Over a game of chess that he was already losing and a bottle of expensive brandy that was swiftly disappearing, Trevor had let out that the ghosts of the slaves murdered on the grounds of his family property, some three hundred years before, had once haunted his house. He had told Marcus of the cracked walls and swinging chandeliers, about the dragging noise of invisible chains in the night, about the whip lashes that had appeared on his back out of thin air.  
   
“I was helpless... hopeless, my friend,” Trevor had told him, the terror of what he’d been through still not quite gone from his eyes. “And then this man, a rugged looking fella, came to me and offered to get rid of my problem. A hoax, I was sure, meant for nothing else but to rob me of my money...”  
   
“Tell me you didn’t…” Marcus began but he saw the truth of it in Trevor’s downcast eyes. “Oh, you idiot... how could you fall for such a dumb trick?”  
   
Trevor met his gaze this time, his chin raised in defiance. “I was desperate and any solution at the time was a valid solution.” Marcus sighed. Trevor went on, unperturbed. “And the fact is that he searched the grounds, dug up some bones, burned them and all the disturbances stopped.”  
   
Trevor was one of the sanest people Marcus knew and the scars on his back left little room for doubt about the truth of his claims. It was that truth that had drawn Marcus to spend hours and hours in searching, no longer looking to science, but now, to the occult and the supernatural.  
   
The man who had taken care of the ghosts had left a card with Trevor. He was the first hunter that Marcus hired to find him a way to beat mortality.  
   
Trevor Bins was the only there when the gold plated coffin carrying his friend Marcus descended on the cemetery’s wet dirt. He was the only one mourning the death of the man who wanted to live forever.

 

The end  
 ****

 **≪◇≫**

**Author's Note:**

> AN: This story was written for the spn_gen_bigbang event, over in LJ. Betareading as done by jackfan2 and alphareading by amber1960, both of whom I deeply thank. Any remaining mistakes are my fault, not hers.


End file.
